High-Grade Red
by ComXDude
Summary: -SPOILERS MAY LIE AHEAD FOR ADVENTURE TIME- After "Stakes," Marceline and Bubblegum seem to have repaired the last piece of damage between them... but what happens when a sudden bolt of lightning nearly kills the Vampire Queen? How does Bubblegum react to seeing her best friend once more in a comatose state, on the brink of death? And what chain of events does this spark?
1. Shocked Into Action

_"... Symphony word-player, breath out of time,"_ Bonnibel quietly sings to herself, singing a song that Marceline had taught her a few years prior. She absently mixes together flasks of chemicals, observing the reactions without paying any significant attention. _"You can call me on another line."_

She smiles to herself as she sings it, and although she can't remember who Marceline said wrote it—all she knows is that they were called something strange—she still loves the song. She'd never admit it out loud, however, as she zealously refuses to concede that she enjoys rock music, largely because Marceline would never let her hear the end of it; not after the arguments they'd had over it before she managed the Vampire Queen's band, the Scream Queens, when they went on tour a few years prior.

As she opens her mouth to sing the next line, she notices the sound of rain outside, heavy drops slapping against the candy-concrete walls. She wonders how she'd failed to hear the rain sooner as she walks towards the window. The princess grips the shutters and prepares to close them, but something compels her to look outside.

Bonnibel puts her head through the window, blinking as the rain droplets fall upon her face and spatter on the lenses of her glasses, and looks around, unable to see very much through the darkness. Above her, lightning flashes, followed by thunder only a few seconds afterwards. She notes that the storm is directly overhead, covering the entire area between the mountains in rain, beginning to pull her head back into the dry interior of the building.

However, just as she pulls away from the rain, she hears a loud crack. Her first thought is that the candy tree in the center of the palace had been struck and a branch had broken off; it's happened before. But in her gut, she feels that it's something far worse.

The princess climbs out through the window in spite of the storm, then hears more loud, sharp cracks. Looking to where they came from, she sees a humanoid shape plummeting from the leaves, several broken branches around it. Even seeing a simple silhouette in the darkness, and from some distance away, her heart drops, and she thinks she knows who it is.

Not even waiting for them to land, she begins sprinting along her palace's uppermost terrace, being careful not to slide over the edge as she makes her way towards the body. Although she's barely been outside for a minute, she's already soaked; her pink, gummy hair is flattened against her back and head, the individual strands melting together in thick globs, and her clothes are heavy with water. In her head, she pleads that the person falling isn't who she thinks it is. Endlessly repeating the words, "Please not her. Please don't let it be her," she rushes to the body's point of impact.

Her thoughts go silent as she reaches the charred form. As she lays eyes on it, her fears are made reality. "Marcy…" she whispers, dropping to her knees in the mud as she sees her best friend's body, contorted in a painful, unnatural position as various branches lie around her, including a large one underneath her stomach. "This can't… how…"

Bubblegum looks into the air above her, seeing only the darkened shape of the tree above her against the thick, black storm clouds. Lightning occasionally flashes, illuminating the sky, followed by the deep, roaring roll of thunder but a few seconds later.

Tears begin welling up in her eyes, but she blinks them away as she comes back to her senses. She shakes her head, refocusing her mind. She sets her jaw and gently scoops Marceline up in her arms, then notices her bass imbedded in the ground a few feet away, its metal blackened and scratched, with mud coating a significant portion of its blade. Bubblegum picks up the axe and throws its strap around her shoulders, then carries her friend's limp body inside the palace.

As she enters, a pair of banana guards look at her in shock, but she pays them no mind. She simply presses on, quickly walking through the corridors of her palace towards her bedroom. In spite of the discord in her head and heart, she is acutely aware of the woman in her arms.

Marceline's body is completely limp, her muscles incredibly tight and tense. Her clothes are blackened and torn, revealing her blue-grey skin beneath. In spite of the cold rainwater on her skin, heat radiates from her torso, particularly on her front.

Behind her, the princess hears the voice of Peppermint Butler call towards her. "Princess? Has something happened?" She doesn't respond, and the sound of footsteps quickly follow. "Princess? What's happ—" He stops mid-sentence as he sees the problem.

However, Bubblegum simply continues her walk, and soon arrives at the double doors of her private bed chambers. She places Marceline on her bed and tears begin streaming from her eyes as she fails to hold them back any longer. They roll down her cheeks before dropping off at her jaw, creating clear lines along her already-moist skin. Her breaths become faster and shakier as the shock of the situation wears off and her emotions begin falling apart.

"Why…?" she whispers, her words catching in her throat. "Why aren't you healing?" She sits on the edge of the bed and looks at Marceline, and she takes an even closer look at her injuries. Large scars in the shape of lightning bolts—Lichtenberg scars—adorn her body, forming dark purple marks against her blue-grey skin. Her muscles are extremely tense, a result of the large quantity of electricity that shot through her system. A variety of scratches and gouges appear all across her face, arms, and parts of her torso and legs visible through her torn clothing. Her hair, which is normally an extremely glossy black like a raven's feathers is instead a dull, charcoal-grey, and coarse to touch.

As she sits on the side of the bed, looking through eyes bleary with tears, Bonnibel hears the sound of the door open as light streaks in from the opening. "Princess?" Peppermint Butler asks nervously. "What happened to Marceline?"

"She… I think she got struck by lightning," the princess quietly responds, her voice barely louder than a whisper. "But she… she should be healing…"

"Is she even…" Peppermint Butler starts, before stopping himself as he considers the possible response.

Bonnibel doesn't turn her teary-eyed gaze from Marceline's comatose form. "Vampires can only be killed by sunlight, a wooden stake through the heart, or being completely burned away. Lightning isn't any of those, and she usually heals fast enough to survive anything."

In spite of this, she places her head on Marceline's chest, desperately hoping to hear a pulse. Because she's only half-undead, she's always had a pulse, albeit a far weaker one than most others. However, with her ear pressed against her friend's ribs, Bonnibel hears no heartbeat.

Bubblegum squeezes her eyes shut, her tears falling onto the chest of her comatose friend, but they bolt open again as she realizes something else. In spite of the fact her pulse is stopped, Marceline is still breathing, albeit incredibly shallowly.

Raising her head up, she says, "She's breathing." A small smile appears on her face, and she repeats herself. "She's breathing! There's still a chance." Turning to Peppermint Butler, she asks, "Can you head down to the infirmary and bring me some supplies?"

"Yes, my princess," he says, bowing.

Bonnibel watches as he leaves, then takes off her lab coat, wiping away her tears as best she can on its fabric, before tossing it to the floor. She then pulls on her necklace, raising up a purple prism. As she touches it, it projects a holographic screen, which soon shows Finn's face.

"Hey, Princess!" he says cheerfully. "What's u— Oh, something bad's happened, hasn't it?"

Nodding gravely, Bubblegum says, "It's Marceline. She got struck by lightning, and she's really badly hurt. For some reason, her healing powers aren't working, and her…" she stops mid-sentence, choking on the words again. "I can't explain it right now. Can you get over here?"

Finn, with shock written all across his face, says, "Yeah. We're out in the desert, so it'll take a few days, but we'll be up there as fast as we can." He turns and looks out of frame. "Jake's not gonna be happy when I tell him about this."

Bonnibel turns off the holo-pendant and pulls a chair to Marceline's side. She takes one of Marceline's hands in hers, and is surprised at how cold it is. As a half-vampire, she's always had relatively low body heat, but this makes her normally cool temperature seem feverish.

In spite of the optimism she'd had a few moments prior, the princess is overcome with a wave of melancholy. Seeing her friend in this state, especially as it was only a few weeks removed from when she had been previously placed in a similar state by the Hierophant's venom, fills her with not only grief, but anger and fear in equal, if not greater measure. "Why did this happen again?" she asks herself, reaching over and stroking her friend's charred hair.

Behind her, the door opens once more, and Peppermint Butler pushes in a trolley of medical equipment; scalpels, forceps, various syringes, an x-ray flashlight, and a defibrillator.

Three days pass, and Bonnibel sits on the edge of Marceline's bed, large bags beneath her bloodshot eyes, which are red and puffy from a combination of sleep deprivation and regular bouts of despondent sobbing. She's a complete mess; her labcoat is discarded lazily on the floor, unmoved from when she initially took it off, her hair is in disarray, and she hasn't changed her clothes since finding Marceline's body, nor has she showered.

The curtains are drawn tight, not allowing any sunlight to enter the room, and candles are set up around the bed, bathing the area in soft, orange light, while the rest of the room is almost completely dark. Many empty coffee cups are scattered around the room, along with empty pizza boxes and noodle bowls. Her equipment is scattered around, discarded on various tables, or even on the floor. On one far side of the room, a CT scanner sits, with a holographic monitor displaying the internals of the Vampire Queen.

Suddenly, the door bursts open as Finn and Jake rush in. "Is Marceline okay?!" the human boy cries out, quickly rushing towards the bed. Immediately behind him, the anthropomorphised dog slows to a halt as he lays eyes on the disheveled face of the princess.

"Oh Glob," he says. "You look—"

"Have you slept?" Finn interrupts, looking at both women with concern. "Like, at all?"

Brushing the rogue hairs from her face, Bonnibel tiredly stands up and answers, "I can't even remember. It's been—" she yawns deeply, "—a tough time." She looks at Marceline, who still lies on her bed. Several electrodes are attached to her body, connected to the monitors scattered about the room. "Marcy's in a bad way. She's got three broken ribs, her sternum's caved in, one shoulder's dislocated, she's got a concussion, and…" she pauses, taking a shaky breath. "And her heart's stopped beating."

Finn and Jake's eyes go wide, and the former shouts, "It stopped?! How? What happened?"

"She got struck by lightning above the palace and fell through the tree. Her healing powers aren't working, and none of my tests have told me why. I can only guess that it has something to due with her heart stopping, but… I'm not sure." Taking a deep breath, she adds, "The only reason she's still alive is her vampirism; only sunlight, a wooden stake through the heart, and complete immolation can kill a vampire, and since lightning and heart failure aren't any of those, they can't kill her. But they can bring her as close as possible." She once more takes a set on the edge of the bed and begins stroking the Vampire Queen's charred hair.

Gently placing a hand on the princess' shoulder, Finn confidently says, "We'll do whatever we can to help her."

Bonnibel shrugs his hand off and exasperatedly cries, "That's just it! I don't know what to do!" She stands up and begins pacing around. "Everything that I've tried hasn't worked. I've tried a defibrillator, but her heart's too damaged to be restarted. I called in Doctor Princess, but she couldn't do anything, either. I've even considered surgery, but I don't know what I'd do once I get there." She slowly shakes her head, as if not believing what she's about to say. "I'd even take a magic solution at this point."

Jake's eyebrows raise in shock. The princess accepting magic? She must be incredibly desperate. Suddenly, he has an idea. "Wait," he says, turning towards his brother. "Do we still those magic cyclops tears?"

Finn looks up, his eyes bright. "Yeah!" he exclaims. "They're back at the treehouse, but we've still got a jar!" He glances at the princess, who for a moment seems to light up, only to have her eyes drop once more.

"No," she sighs. "I've run tests on those, and they can only heal what they touch. There's too much damage for them to work effectively; it's too deep."

Finn sits down and rests his head on his hands. "Well, I've got nothing." He looks to Jake.

"Hey! Don't look at me!" the humanoid dog grunts. "The tears were the last thing I had."

As Jake says this, Bonnibel struggles to maintain her tears. She stands at the edge of the bed, looking over her friend, with her hands clenched into fists as she tries to control her grief. This soon gives way to anger, and she shouts, "Why can't we just be happy?!" Finn and Jake jump at this sudden outburst, looking at the princess with wide eyes. "I don't know if we just have rotten luck, or some petty deity has it out for us, or even if fate is determined to keep us apart, but for some reason, something like this always happens!"

She slams her fist into the wall, visibly cracking it and causing the boys to slowly step away from the fuming woman. With her fist dully throbbing, she growls, "Every time I think that we can just get along, something goes wrong. Either my kingdom has a new catastrophe, or she just drops off the face of Ooo for a few decades without even leaving a note, or one of us says something stupid to the other, or…"

She pauses, clenching her eyes shut in a vain attempt to force back her tears. "Or I push her away." Bonnibel remembers her terrible treatment of Marceline not even five years before—barely any time in comparison to their respective lifespans—and how she had been the one to force the Vampire Queen out of her life, then blamed her for their falling out. Not only this, but she rationalized pushing Marceline away by using her friend's emotional vulnerabilities as justification, instead of trying to help her through them.

Only in the past few years, with the help of Finn, Jake, and a minor musical mishap-turned accidental emotional outpouring had they finally gotten along again, and although they're near-inseparable at this point, the memories and guilt still remain.

"Hey," Finn says, his voice bringing the princess back to reality. "We're going to help Marceline. I don't know exactly how far back you two go, but I haven't known her for anywhere near as long as you have, and I know that she'll pull through."

Stepping forwards, Jake continues. "Yeah! She's gone through way worse than this. She survived the Great Mushroom War, for Glob's sake. This is like a nap for her."

"Exactly. She'll survive, and she'll get better." Determination written all across his face, Finn finishes his inspiring speech by gently placing his hand once more on the princess' shoulder. "She just needs some help this time."

Bonnibel tries to smile as she looks towards her human friend, but fails to summon even a small amount of faux-optimism. She silently sits down on the bed next to Marceline and looks down at her broken form, her eyes tracing the paths of the massive, blotchy Lichtenberg scars along her skin. Within her mind, she asks how she can help her friend, trying to summon even the smallest amount of positivity. However, the combination of her exhaustion and constant distress—formed from both the current situation and the battles against the Vampire Court not even a month prior—makes this impossible.

She takes ahold of Marceline's head and begins cradling it, stroking her coarse, charred hair as her tears drop from her eyes once more. "Please…" she whispers. "How can we fix this?" Finn and Jake watch on silently, unsure of what to say. "I can't lose you. I almost lost you to the vampires, I can't lose you now."

Her voice breaking, she sobs, "I wish I knew how to help you. I wish…" She trails off, but Jake seems to have a sudden idea.

"Wait, wish?" he asks. Turning to Finn, he shouts, "Dude! We can go to Prismo!"

Finn's mouth quickly raises into a wide smile. "Yeah!" he excitedly agrees. "He can fix this no problem!"

"Prismo?" Bonnibel asks, looking up and snuffling. "Who's that? Can they help Marcy?"

Jake climbs onto Finn's back and begins digging through his bag. "Of course he can! He's the Wish Master, and a great guy. Helping people is, like, totally his jam!" He hops off of the back of his brother with a simple note in hand, and then stretches out his hands to grab the shoulders of both Finn and Bonnibel. He touches the "P" on the bottom, then the three are teleported away in a cluster of glowing cubes.

They rematerialize in a simple cubic, yellow room, with the pink silhouette of a humanoid man cast against its interior. As soon as he touches down, Jake runs to the figure with a massive grin. "Prismo!" he exclaims, seeming to forget about the situation at hand.

"Oh, hey guys! What're you doing here?" he asks with both surprise and excitement. When he sees the princess, who is sat on the ground looking around in confusion, tears still dripping from her face, he slides down towards the anthropomorphic dog and whispers, "Who's the chick?"

Stepping forwards, Finn says, "This is Princess Bubblegum. She's got a wish to make, and…" he looks towards his friend, "she's been having a rough time the past few days, so it'd be best if you treat her with respect."

"Gotcha." Prismo slides back up the wall. "Hey, Princess. My bros tell me you have a wish to make."

She looks at him with wide, teary eyes, before nodding and slowly standing up. "A few days ago, my… our friend Marceline was struck by lightning in a storm. She's survived, but she's really badly hurt. Normally she can heal through anything, but for some reason, her condition hasn't improved at all since she got struck." She takes a breath. "Can you help her?"

Prismo remains silent for a moment. "Alright. Because you're friends with Jake and Finn, and because you clearly care about this 'Marceline,' I'll give you the rundown on how this stuff works. Your wish is going to change things. It will change your timeline from how it was supposed to normally progress, and as a result, it will alter itself to fit the wish, and it could change things in… unexpected ways. When you make your wish, you should try to keep it short and to-the-point, and word it as carefully as possible so that you can avoid any of these mishaps."

Bonnibel nods, then opens her mouth to speak. Before she can start, Prismo interrupts her.

"Actually, Finn had something like this happen. The first time I met these two, Finn wished for the Lich to never exist. It brought him to a new timeline, where the Lich hadn't been created. It should've overwritten your timeline, but since Jake was here, in my time room, both existed at once, creating a paradox. Even in this wish-altered timeline, the Lich still ended up getting made, but because of a loophole in Finn's wording—he said he wished that the Lich 'never existed,' in the past tense—it allowed him to still exist, just after the relative point in the timeline that the wish was made. Then Jake undid his wish by changing the events before they came here, and when they went back to you guys' timeline, Finn had never made the wish."

Looking slightly annoyed, the princess prepares to speak again. She takes a breath, only to be interrupted once more.

"However, even though Finn technically hadn't made the wish, because Jake still existed from a timeline both where this alternate timeline never existed and where it did, the paradox managed to let both exist at once. This actually caused some more problems, when—"

"I get it!" Bonnibel shouts, then blushes at her outburst. The three look at her in surprise, before she quickly apologizes. "Sorry. It's just… this is really important to me."

Prismo nods, signalling her to continue. Taking a breath to collect her thoughts, she says, "I wish… I wish for our friend, Marceline Abadeer, to be healed of the damage caused by the lightning that struck her. I do not want her vampirism cured or for her to have any of her abilities altered in any way. I do not want her memories or personality changed, either. I only want the damage from the lightning to be cured."

After a brief moment's consideration, the Wish Master nods. "Alright. That'll do." A sensation, almost like a shift overcomes Bonnibel, then Prismo asks, "You want me to send you back?"

"Yes, please," the princess responds. She graciously adds, "Thank you."

"Hey, it's what I do." As she is ported away in beams of multicolored light, Prismo turns to Jake. "I did tell her to keep it short, right?"

Meanwhile, back in her bedroom, Bonnibel lands and rushes to Marceline's side. For a moment, she notices no difference in her friend's condition, but as she watches, the Vampire Queen's skin clears up, the burn marks and Lichtenberg scars fading away. With a muffled crunch, her broken bones reset themselves and fuse back together.

Her chest shuddering, Marceline's eyes flutter open and she quickly bolts upright, looking confusion. She is immediately pushed back down to the bed as the princess tackles her in a hug. "Woah!" she grunts in shock. "That's one way to wake up." She glances around and realizes that she's in her friend's bedroom. With a smirk, she starts to ask, "Now, how'd I—"

She stops mid-sentence as she feels moisture on her shoulder and notices that Bonnibel is crying. She looks down at her with wide eyes, and realizes how unkempt she is, her eyes darting from the messy hair to the dress that hasn't been changed in days. Around her, she takes inventory of the various medical apparati scattered around, then looks down at her free hand, although she is unaware of the damage that she had sustained, as had now healed from. "What happened?" she asks.

Bubblegum pulls herself away from her friend and wipes her eyes, then quietly responds, "You got struck by lightning." She glances towards the window. "You were above the tree and fell through. I don't know if it was the strike or the fall, but your—" she pauses, choking on her words, "—your heart stopped."

An expression of shock overtakes Marceline's face and she brings one hand to her chest, and is relieved to feel her heartbeat, as weak as it is.

"I'm not sure if it was because your heart wasn't beating, but your healing wasn't working, either," the princess continues. "You were covered in scars and burns, and you had a lot of internal damage, too." She sighs and embraces her friend again, who this time reciprocates the gesture.

"How long was I out?" she asks, her eyes distant as she tries to remember anything before the strike.

"Just under three days."

Marceline's brow furrows as she racks her brain for her recent memories, but comes up empty. She looks at the princess, whose eyes pour out tears as the stress and emotional turmoil she suffered over the last three days are cleansed. She notes how tired she looks; not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. "Were you awake that whole time? Taking care of me?" she asks.

Bonnibel nods, looking up at her friend's face. The Vampire Queen's blood red eyes meet the princess' deep green ones, and she smiles, bringing up a thumb to wipe away the tears. "Thanks, Bonnie. I appreciate it." She smiles gratefully, but mentally scolds herself at how lame that sounds. She adds, "But you don't need to work yourself down to the bone for me."

The princess, now smiling as well, snuffles softly. "I know, but…" she briefly pauses. "It's just, I don't feel like I'd be able to live if you'd died." Marceline's eyes widen in shock, dismayed to hear her best friend—the ever-sensible Bonnibel Bubblegum—saying something like that. Seeing this, Bonnibel backtracks.

"I-I didn't mean it like that! I meant... " she pauses once more, averting her eyes and carefully reconsidering her words. "What I meant was, my life is just so… monotonous. Day in, day out, I'm working, trying to help my people with every little problem that comes up. I've been doing this for so long, that the days and weeks just blur together. I've led them through so many catastrophes that they are barely even a change of pace anymore."

Bonnibel looks up at her friend, a blush rising on her cheeks. "The only time I actually feel alive is when I'm with you. Like, I've known you for hundreds of years, but I still never know what to expect when you're around."

Marceline joins her friend in blushing, her pale blue-grey skin offset by the red permeating her face.

Both women are distracted by a sequence of rapid, hollow noises, almost like a muffled windchime. A cluster of multicolored beams descend and form into Finn, who rushes towards the bed. "Marceline!" he shouts, oblivious to the current scene. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she responds. "But where the heck did you just come from?"

Finn glances over his shoulder, almost as if trying to see if there's any trace of his travel, but before he can answer, the princess quickly says, "It's a long story." He turns back to her, looking confused, but she shoots him a look that simply says: 'Not right now.'

After a few moments, Finn glances towards the door. "Well, I'm glad that you're okay, but I should probably get back home. Jake said he's gonna stay at Prismo's for a bit, but I don't know how long he really means by that. I should probably be there when he gets back."

"Alright. Check back sometime tomorrow," Bonnibel requests.

As he exits, the women see him off. The door closes, Finn waving at them through the closing space, before once more bathing the room in darkness, save for the moonlight peeking through the curtains and the gentle light from the candles.

Marceline waves back at Finn, then asks the princes, "Who's Prismo?"

"I'm… not really sure," Bonnibel responds. "But Finn and Jake said that he's the 'Wish Master'. We went to him, and I used my wish for you to get better." She glances up at Marceline, who looks at her in surprise. Her expression soon changes to a simple soft and grateful, yet amused smile.

"Jeez, Peebs. I didn't think you cared about me this much," she jokes, softly chuckling. Her laughter soon ends as she sees the princess' face, which is serious and unamused.

"Don't say that," she snaps, "even as a joke." She takes ahold of Marceline's arm. "I'll never stop caring about you, and nothing will ever change that."

After a few moments of silence, Marceline quietly responds, "I know," as she leans her head against her friend's. They remain like this for several minutes before the Vampire Queen notices her friend slumping against her. She glances over at her and sees she is asleep, passed out on her shoulder.

With a smile, she gently lowers the princess onto her back, eliciting a small groan, but otherwise getting no reaction from her friend, before slowly floating up from the bed and placing herself on the ground. As she touches the floor, her legs begin to shake due to the lack of regular use they've had ever since she gained the power to fly almost a thousand years before. Taking deep breaths, she manages to get them under control, and takes short, careful steps away from the bed, in order to both remain silent and to avoid her legs giving out beneath her.

She immediately heads towards the princess' wardrobe, planning to replace the burnt and torn clothes she currently has on. Opening it up, she is stunned by the overabundance of pink within; almost everything in it is some shade of pink, or a similar color like red or purple. Marceline wonders to herself how she can wear pretty much one color all the time and not get tired of it; even she, with her admittedly small color palette, has more colors to her closet.

However, this analysis of her friend's fashion choices quickly ends as she notices a few choice items within. Her eyes first settle on a black leather jacket, hung with several other jackets, sweaters, and the like. As she moves the clothes around it and takes a closer look, she realizes that it's the jacket she'd given Bonnibel a few years prior, when the princess had managed Marceline's band, the Scream Queens. She smiles as she sees this, and she notices that it is quite worn out in certain areas—and she didn't skimp on the quality when she bought it, so this is no small feat on Bonnibel's part. Marceline chuckles to herself, wondering just how that princess had managed to wear out full grain leather like this. Especially in just four years. She also notes that the shirt she'd given Bonnie—the one the Door Lord stole from her—isn't in there, but decides it isn't important. Certainly not enough to warrant waking her up.

Marceline eventually decides on a simple outfit—jeans, t-shirt, and a sweatshirt—then heads into the bathroom connected to the bedroom, and starts running a shower.

A half-hour later, she exits the bathroom and sighs as she feels the brisk hit her blue-grey skin. The last of the candles have gone out, leaving the room completely dark, save for the light peeking in beneath the tightly-drawn curtains. The Vampire Queen contemplates returning home, but as she sees Bonnibel lying on the bed, fast asleep, she decides that she owes it to her friend to stay just a little longer, especially considering Bonnibel had stayed up for three days straight for her.

She pushes off the ground and floats over to her friend's bed, then looks down at her supine form. Even in the darkness, her eyes can pick out each detail without a problem. A smirk appears on her face as she notices a small dribble trailing from her friend's mouth, and she slowly descends next to her, levitating a few inches from the bed.

Without a thought, almost on instinct, she begins gently stroking away some of the stray hairs from her friend's forehead, while her eyes remain trained on her face, noting the simple serenity. Outside, the birds begin chirping, their melodies marking the start of the morning.

However, Marceline simply remains floating just off the surface of her friend's bed. She folds her hands beneath her head and relaxes for what feels like just a few minutes. She soon hears the sounds of Bonnibel stirring, then she opens her eyes and, glancing at the clock on the wall above them, is surprised to see that five hours had passed. The Vampire Queen wonders to herself how she'd managed to sleep for that long, especially after having been unconscious for nearly three days just beforehand.

She soon refocuses her attention on Bonnibel, who's sat up on the edge of her bed. With a smirk on her face, she turns herself invisible and begins floating a few feet behind her, and watches as she grabs a bit of her dress, then look down at it in surprise, almost like she hadn't expected it to be there, before sighing and shaking her head. Marceline wonders as to why she did this.

The princess stands up and stretches, before looking around the room, her face slightly worried. Marceline, sensing an opportunity, darts to her friend while becoming visible, and places her hands on her shoulders. "Looking for someone?"

"Aah!" Bonnibel shouts in surprise, before laughing and gently pushing Marceline back. "Come on! I just woke up. Not cool."

"I will not apologize for my art," the Vampire Queen responds, posing dramatically.

Bubblegum quickly looks her friend up and down. "Hey, are you wearing my clothes?"

"Oh, uh, yeah," Marceline answers, blushing and rubbing the back of her neck. "I took a shower and I didn't want to wake you up so I… well, I helped myself."

"Well, just make sure you give them back."

"Hey, what do you take me for?" she jokes. "I'm a lotta things, but I'm no thief!"

"Wouldn't put it past you," Bonnibel teases, before quickly apologizing. "Sorry, that was mean. I know you wouldn't steal from me." After a few moments, the princess begins walking towards the bathroom. "Alright, I'm gonna go take a shower. Don't do anything crazy."

Marceline begins reclining in the air. "Hey, as long as there isn't any lightning, I'll be fine." The door shuts, then she flops down on the bed. The Vampire Queen wonders why she can't have a bed as nice as her friend's, before deciding her bed would probably be more comfortable if she actually laid in it, rather than floating above it.

As she lay on the bed, she allows her mind to wander. Her thoughts soon arrive at Bonnibel, and she smiles as she thinks about how close they are now—just as close as they'd been before their split, albeit far more platonic this time around. She compares their relationship to the constant conflict they were in not even three years prior, and then traces the memories back to when they finally, after literal centuries of animosity, finally began getting along again.


	2. What Was Missing?

Relaxing in her living room, calmly drifting on the air with her bass in her hands, Marceline was preparing to play a song that she'd learned from a very old friend, a very long time ago. She busily tuned her strings, tightening them beyond the point she normally plays at, as a metronome steadily ticked beside her, its steady, hollow click the only sound in the otherwise empty room.

Making sure the strings were properly tuned, Marceline cleared her throat before she began to sing, a slightly melancholy tone in her voice. _"Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise."_

She strung a few more notes, before starting the next verse. _"Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these sunken eyes and learn to see. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free."_

Suddenly, she was taken out of the music by the sound of a door opening in her kitchen, accompanied by a voice she'd thought that she'd never need to hear again: the squeaking, nasally laughter of a Door Lord. She immediately stops her song and gets a tight grip on her bass as it leaps through its door, its eyes set on her axe.

In an instant, it dashed through the doorway and across the room to her, then grabbed her bass around the neck with one hand while blasting her in the jaw with the other. She almost lost her grip, but the Vampire Queen managed to keep her grip on the instrument. Crying out in pain and anger, she wrenched her bass from the would-be thief's hands and brought it around, before bringing violently bringing its blade down in a fury-fueled attempt to cleave it in two. However, the Door Lord dodged the attack, causing Marceline to imbed the blade in the ground.

Behind her, Finn, Jake, BMO, and Bonnibel had entered through the free-floating, magical door and were watching the fight unfold.

As she struggled to pull her axe from the ground, the Door Lord had reached onto its belt and thrown another key, which burst and formed another door. Finally freeing her weapon, Marceline brought it over her head and attempted to attack the yellow-skinned intruder again, only for it to open the door and blast her directly in the face with sunlight.

The Vampire Queen fell to her hands and knees, hissing in pain, although the damage quickly healed. "Marceline!" Finn shouted as he Jake, and BMO rushed to her side as the Door Lord leaped through its newly-made door. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she answered with one hand on her head. She looked up, and was surprised to see Bonnibel looking at her with clearly visible concern. Marceline rolled onto her back, only to be immediately blinded by the bright sunlight coming from the door.

As she threw up her arms to protect her face, Finn rose to his feet and determinedly stated, "Don't worry; we'll get him!" He climbed through the door, with the others right behind him, although Bonnibel lingered for a moment and watched as Marceline crawled away from the harsh sunlight, hissing with every burn.

Once she was far enough away, she flew up the ladder and into her bedroom, then pulled out a pair of long, cream-colored gloves and a large sunhat, then followed the rest.

On the other side of the door, she found herself in a red-rock canyon, much like the one where she and her dad had fought little more than a year prior, and Finn had tried to crush him with a boulder. In front of her, a short way down the canyon, everyone was gathered in front of a large bronze door, bordered by crumbling stone brickwork, and ancient runes along its curved frame.

At the top, words began appearing, which Finn was reading. "This door shall yield to no command, save for a song from a… genuine band?" he questioningly read aloud, before throwing his arms up and shouting, "What is this gripagrap?!"

"It's the Door of the Door Lords, Finn," Bonnibel answered. "We used to lock them up, but they kept breaking out." She pounded her fist into her palm. "Because they're Door Lords."

"They broke out because you let them live," Marceline casually corrected, pretending to inspect her nails through her gloves. The princess turned towards her with a look of disdain, angry and bordering on rage from this single comment.

"Hmm… the door said it would open for a genuine band," Finn started, redirecting the situation. "Let's try to music this door open as a quintet!"

In an instant, Jake was onboard with the idea. "Can I be the jerk in the band?" he asked. "'Cuz that's an important part of a band's success!" He proceeded to shrink his face and grunt, with a stereotypical jerky expression.

"I know how to get through this door," Marceline confidently stated, raising her bass and quickly strumming a few notes. "We're gonna lay down a chill jam."

"Hey! Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Finn shouted excitedly, pumping his fist.

"Just… keep it cool. Got that, Princess?" she requested, pointing at Bonnibel. In response, she furrowed her brow, then picked up BMO and pulled off the front of their case.

"Oh! My face!" the tiny robot exclaimed in surprise. The princess sat down with BMO in-hand, then began pressing various buttons in order to make noise, while bending the circuits to alter their sounds to fit her means.

"Let's see if you hacks can keep up with my raw talent!" Jake shouted, diving headlong into his self-appointed jerk role, striking a pose and running his bow along his viola's strings. A few feet away, Finn began beatboxing.

With everyone else having begun, Marceline floated up into the air and began strumming her bass. _"La-da, da-da, daa… I'm gonna bury you in the ground," she started. "La-da, da-da, daa… I'm gonna bury you with my sound."_

She turned to the princess and, an arrogant smile on her face, continued. _"I'm gonna drink the red from your pretty pink face. I'm gonna—"_

"Marceline!" Bonnibel interrupted, looking up at her with a look of scorn. "That's too distasteful!"

"Oh… you don't like that?" Marceline snorted, stopping her song and glaring at the princess, before shouting, "Or do you just not like me?!" She flew to the top of the door, backflipping in the process, then began striking the strings of her bass with increased force, the enchantments within its metal allowing everyone to clearly hear it nearly fifteen feet below, even without an amp.

She began singing again, confidently strutting along the masonry with a cruel smile on her face as everyone look in on shock—or, for Bonnibel, anger.

 _"Sorry I don't treat you like a goddess. Is that what you want me to do? Sorry I don't treat you like you're perfect—"_ she shook her head in faux-remorse, _"—like all your little, loyal subjects do._

 _"Sorry I'm not made of sugar, am I not sweet enough for you? Is that why you always avoid me? I must be such an inconvenience to you!"_ She hopped from the top of the door and began floating in front of it.

 _"Well, I'm just your problem! I'm just your problem. It's like I'm not even a person… am I? I'm just your problem."_

As she sang the last line, she shook her head and the arrogance disappeared, replaced with an expression of sorrow. Beneath her, Finn and Jake had taken seats on the ground and still looked on in confusion, while Bonnibel's anger had abated as well, and now she seemed to watch with a look bordering on guilt, as she only now was beginning to realize Marceline's actual feelings following their falling-out centuries before.

 _"Well, I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I shouldn't have to justify what I do, and I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I shouldn't have to explain myself to you."_ On the ground, the princess raised a hand and opened her mouth to say something—to apologize, perhaps—only to clench it into a fist and harden her face.

"It's working! Look at the door!" Finn shouted, and Bonnibel glanced at it, but didn't pay any attention or mind to anything other than Marceline and her song, not noticing the faces on the door's orbs growing into massive open-mouthed grins.

 _"I'm sorry that I exist, I can't remember what landed me on your blacklist, but I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I shouldn't have to be the one that makes up with you, so…"_ she pauses, her expression becoming more pained. _"Why do I want to? Why do I want… to…?"_

A single tear drops from one of the Vampire Queen's eyes, dropping to the ground and spattering against the stones, just a few feet away from Bonnibel, who stared up at Marceline, her face illuminated by the door and her clearly-mixed emotions on full display.

Realizing she was revealing the emotions she'd intentionally kept hidden, buried deep within herself, Marceline falters. "To… bury you in the ground? And… drink the blood from your…"

With her groove completely thrown-off, Marceline lets out an annoyed grunt and stares down at everyone apoplectically. "Stop STARING at me!" she demands, trying to hide her embarrassment, before quickly flying and getting in Bonnibel's face. "You threw me off!"

"Come on everyone! Don't stop now!" Finn pleaded, hopping from foot-to-foot and clapping his hands above his head in excitement. "The door was responding to our music!" Marceline and Bonnibel look at him in confusion, apparently not knowing what the door had been doing during the Vampire Queen's song. "I wonder what it liked! Or what it was missing!"

Looking around at everyone, Jake rudely stated, "Well, I know what was missing! Talent! I'm getting out of here, you hacks! Talentless hacks!" The dog marches off, viola in-hand, as everyone watched him, an amused grin on Marceline's face.

"Yoiks!" she chuckled. Finn, meanwhile, had slung off his backpack and had begun to dig around in it.

"Maybe we'd be a genuine band is we were nicer to each other," he suggested, looking between the two women in front of him, "and hung out as buds!" Pulling out a noodle block, he proposed, "Let's take a noodle break!" Marceline and Bonnibel looked at each other in confusion, before Finn thrust the block towards them. "Come on! It'll help!"

Wordlessly, Marceline turned around and floated back towards the door. "No, wait!" Finn cried out. "Don't go, too!"

Pausing for a moment, the Vampire Queen explained, "I'm just gonna get stuff to cook that." Finn, meanwhile, had already taken a sizeable bite out of it.

"Cook…?" he thoughtfully asked himself, a look of slight confusion on his face. He and Bonnibel watched as Marceline flew through the door, returning to her own home, while Jake was, presumably, on his way back to the treehouse, if not already there.

Looking back at Finn, the princess smiled. "That was sweet. What you said about 'being buds'."

"Mh, hmm! Thanks!" the human boy replied, then watched as Marceline flew back through the door, holding a burner and a pan of water.

"I'm back, yo!" she'd announced gleefully, planting her cooking supplies on the ground. "Come here, baby," she jokingly told BMO, who lay down in front of her. She plugged the burner into one of its ports, eliciting a small grunt.

As they waited for the coil to heat up and the water to boil, Finn started wandering around, exploring the canyon and looking for any points of interest. Meanwhile, Marceline had lay back, hovering a few inches off the ground and carefully positioning herself to avoid letting any sunlight touch her skin. However, as the sun was setting, this wasn't much of a problem.

Bonnibel watched Finn's antics for a few minutes, mildly amused, but soon voiced the thoughts on her mind to Marceline. "Hey," she started awkwardly.

"Yeah?" the Vampire Queen responded, suspicion in her voice.

"About what you said in your song…" The princess was hesitant to meet Marceline's eyes.

"Oh, sorry about that," she laughed, albeit somewhat forced. "I got a little carried away."

Bringing her hands up, Bonnibel quickly responded, "No no no! I'm not angry. I just… is that how you really feel?"

Marceline sighed and sat up, lowering to the ground and pausing for a moment before answering. "Yeah… it is." She turned and watched Finn as he attempted to climb a boulder in the distance. "I don't like letting people know how I feel… especially if it's something like this. But, yeah. That's how I actually feel about..." She gestures between herself and the princess.

Her feelings of guilt returning, Bonnibel looked at the Vampire Queen, sadness written all over her face. "You should've told me. I assumed that you just… didn't care what I did. That you were fine with it." She looked towards the setting sun. "Even after I'd… pushed you away, I always saw you having fun at all of your shows and goofing off all the time, even more than when we were still together. You always looked so happy, and it made me angry. It seemed like you thought we were a joke.

"I tried to justify it all by telling myself you didn't care, and that if I pushed you away, it wouldn't affect you at all. That you wouldn't be hurt."

Pulling her knees to her chest, Marceline shakes her head. "I know pain—always have—and I can deal with it. I've been doing that for a thousand years. My mom died when I was 6, the first friend I made after she died went crazy and abandoned me, I didn't meet my dad until I was almost 13, and he was a soul-sucking psycho who killed all of my other friends. Then all of the humans I'd spent, like, ten years protecting ended up ditching Ooo and I got vamp'd."

She deeply sighs. "There was a long time where I just disappeared, and when I finally decided to show my face again, you were the first person that I met." Marceline looks at Bubblegum. "And I finally thought that I'd found someone who wouldn't leave. But… I was afraid, and I tried not to get attached to you. Even when I was scared, I couldn't help but fall for you. And just when I'd thought that it could last forever, I lost you, too."

The princess' brow furrowed as her mouth hung open, and she wanted to say something, but couldn't force any sound from her mouth.

"This was a different kind of pain. It wasn't just being abandoned, and it wasn't someone close to me dying. It was being forced away from someone I thought that I'd never lose." She started floating again, uncomfortable against the hard, rocky ground. "For a long time after that, all of my jokes were just cries for help; they were how I coped with the fear and the pain."

"Marcy…" Bonnibel looked at her with pure grief on her face. "I'm so sorry. I wish I knew what you were going through."

A sad smile on her face, Marceline simply responded, "Well, now you do." However, her smile soon faded. "But I still don't know how to deal with it. It's been this long, and I still have no idea. I barely even started getting over it before I started hanging with Finn and Jake." With a shrug, she looked at the woman to her side. "I guess… jokes and sass are just how I get through tough times."

The two sat in silence, and the princess started to raise her arms to offer a hug, before a thunderous crack echoed through the canyon, followed by a victorious shout from Finn. Both women jumped, then looked over to see Finn standing over the split remains of the boulder he'd been trying to climb, a large dust cloud formed around it, while the human boy shouts towards them, "Hey! Did you see that?"

Marceline gave him a thumbs up, prompting a second triumphant yell.

Within an hour, Finn returned to the others and sat down, then handed a noodle block to the Vampire Queen, who dropped it into the boiling water. The sun had since dipped down over the horizon, and she removed her large, floppy sun hat.

"Pasta, water. Getting, hotter," Finn said to himself, his own block of noodles still in his hands. "A song about noodles?'

"No!" Bonnibel and Marceline shouted in tandem, before glancing at each other, amused. Finn made a mewl-like noise and clapped his hands over his cheeks, and all three laughed together.

"For our next attempt," the princess started, "I want to be the lead."

"Yeah! Sounds cool my bud!" Finn enthusiastically agreed. Behind the women, Jake reappeared, shifted into a taller, punkier form, and wearing one of Marceline's pairs of ripped jeans.

"Hmph!" he grunted, announcing his arrival, viola in-hand.

"Jake! You're back!"

The magic dog exaggeratedly pointed at his human brother. "Shutchoface! I came back for the music." Meanwhile, the princess and the Vampire Queen were getting ready, the former sitting on her rock once more with BMO on her lap, defaced again.

"BMO, execute song structure alpha," she requested. The small robot began making noises, both vocal and electronic, while she tweaked its inner circuitry to make the desired sounds while also writing an equation in the dirt beside her with a stick. "Marceline, begin playing triplet quavers in the mixolydian mode."

Marceline, floating in the air, jokingly responded, "Alright, fine." She strummed a single note. "Wait… what's a quaver?" She started strumming randomly, trying to jog her memory.

"Finn." Bonnibel raises her index finger. "Vibrate your uvula by dampening and undampening your larynx."

"Wha?" Finn grunted, confused.

"Go-o li-ike thi-is, si-il-ly!" PB demonstrated, vibrating her vocal chords with her finger.

"Oh!" The human began doing as the princess demonstrated. "Wa-a-a-a-a-a-ah!"

Bonnibel continued fine-tuning BMO. "Okay… okay… Jake? Are you gonna join in?" Instead of joining in, Jake elected to smash his viola against the ground with a loud shout, while Marceline grunted in annoyance as she tried to play the mixolydian scale from memory, in triplets, after remembering a quaver to be an alternative name for an eighth note.

"Everyone! Just stick to my blueprints!" the princess ordered, before accidentally putting her hand on BMO's face, causing them to gasp as sparks shot and flames shot from his front.

"Oooohh…!" BMO groaned, their face glitching for a moment.

Finn sighed in disappointment. "One more time?"

Bonnibel blushed as she quickly checked to make sure the robot in her lap wasn't damaged, while erasing her equation with her foot. "I may have, um… miscalculated."

"Ha!" Marceline laughed, floating towards the pink woman. "Looks like you aren't as perfect as you thought! Guess you can't judge me anymore!"

Bubblegum bolted upright in anger. "I never said you had to be perfect!"

"Alright! Time out guys," Finn pleaded, attempting to calm the face-off unfolding in front of him. Marceline had other plans, however. She smirked, before spitting a glob of spit onto Bonnibel's sweatshirt.

Gasping loudly, the princess rigidly squared her shoulders, enraged, before stiffly turning away and marching towards the door, her voice rising in both volume and pitch. "Princess!" Finn cried after her. "Princess, wait!"

Marceline hissed and clenched her bass in her hand, the edges of its metal neck digging in her palm and fingers. "Whatever!" she grunted, tears welling up in her eyes as she immediately regretted her action. "I'm out of here, too!"

She flew off after the princess, leaving Finn behind her. "Marceline?" he asked, watching them both leave, followed by a backpedaling Jake, who pretended to cry as he shouted back to Finn, although the women didn't hear what he'd said.

"Bonnie!" Marceline shouted as she closed the distance between herself and the princess. "Bonnie!" I'm sorry."

"Yeah, right," Bonnibel grunted, not even glancing at the half-demon behind her. The Vampire Queen shook her head, then grabbed her shoulder and turned her around to face her.

"Bonnie," she started, staring her in the eye. "I'm sorry that I spit on you, and that I made fun of you." She sighs, then quietly adds, "All the times I made fun of you."

As Bubblegum saw the tears in her eyes, and the clear regret written all over her face, her gaze softened. "It's fine Marcy. Besides, I shouldn't have yelled at you." She turned back to the free-floating door that leads back to Marceline's house. "But it's clear we're not getting through this door. Not right now, at least." She continued walking, and Marceline floated just behind her, Jake a few yards behind and to the side.

Suddenly, with a slow clap setting his beat, Finn began to sing. _"Everyone—Bubblegum—I'm so dumb. I should've told you, what I lost… was a piece of your hair."_

Bonnibel stopped dead in her tracks, blushing, while Marceline and Jake continued for a few steps before they turned around, the former doing so with a combination of amusement and chagrin at this revelation.

 _"Now it's gone, gone forever. But I guess, what did it even matter when I just… just had all of you there? Oh, just had all of you there with me. My friends, if you're even my friends…"_

The door's faces began smiling once more, their mouths opening and emitting light once more. "You like this?" Finn asked, looking up at them. Behind him, everyone had once more began walking away, but he had come to a sudden realization. "This is what was missing… the truth!" He turned around once more and continued singing, now much more upbeat and confident, prompting everyone to turn around and look at him again.

 _"What am I to you?"_ he started. Marceline began strumming her bass, and quickly matched it up with his lyrics. _"Am I a joke, your knight, or you brother? What am I to you?_

 _"Do you look down on me 'cause I'm younger? Do you think that I don't understand, I just wanted us together and to play as a band. Last night was the most fun I've ever had, I even liked it when the two of you would get mad… at each other."_

Bonnibel sat down once more and popped of BMO's face, then quickly joined in the music, while Jake began playing his now-taped-up viola, harmonizing with the rest.

 _"Oh, you a-a-a-a-are my best friends in the world. You a-a-a-a-are my best friends in the world." He turned to Bonnibel and Marceline. "That's ri-i-i-i-ight, I'm talking about the two of you girls."_

Turning to Jake, Finn continued. _"And you, Jake; I wanna sing a song to you and I refuse to make it fake. What am I to you?"_

Marceline flew next to him and joined in singing the next couple lines. _"Am I a joke, your knight, or your brother? What am I to you?"_

 _"Do you look down on my 'cause I'm younger? Do you think that I don't understand, I just wanted us together and to play as a band. I'll forget that I lost a piece of your hair. I'll remember the pasta that we shared… over there…"_

Flying down next to him again, Marceline sang once more, but only pitching in for the last part of the first two lines. _"Ah-ah, you a-a-a-a-are my best friends in the world. You a-a-a-a-are my best friends in the world. That's ri-i-i-i-ight, I'm talking about the two of you girls."_

Now flying next to Bonnibel, the two women began harmonizing in the background of Finn's lyrics, doing so in almost perfect tandem.

 _"And you, Jake; I wanna sing a song to you and I refuse to make it fake. Make no mistake, I'm gonna sing a song that feels so real it'll make this do-o-o-o-o-or break!"_

As he sang the last word, Finn struck a pose as the door was overtaken by blinding light and disappeared, leaving him standing in front of the open doorway as Bonnibel and Marceline deeply smiled at one-another.

Within the room, the Door Lord was eating a sandwich while sitting amongst an uncountable number of drawers, almost like a room of infinite filing cabinets, each housing stolen items. He stood up as the quintet walked into the room, nervously squeaking to himself.

Finn walked a few steps into the room and stated, "It's over Door Lord!" before Jake leapt in behind him, pointing exaggeratedly.

"So hand over our stuff!"

In response, the yellow-skinned creature simply shook its head and nasally vocalized in what could be assumed was meant to be a sentence, while gesturing with its hands for emphasis on its squeaks. However, it did little more than confuse Finn. "What's he tryna say?"

"I totally get it!" Marceline interjected, stepping forwards. "He may have stolen our treasures…"

"...but in doing so," Bonnibel continued, taking her place at Marceline's side, "he showed us…"

"...that the real treasure, was friendship!" Jake finished, completing the line-up. Both he and the Vampire Queen were trying their hardest not to laugh at how lame they sounded.

The Door Lord's face lit up with joy as he squeaked yet again, waving his hands gleefully. This soon ended, however, as everyone set on him and pounded him into a pulp, knocking out a few teeth and giving him a black eye, before tying him up with rope. Within a few moments, he was groaning in pain as Jake dug through its sack of stolen loot.

"Alright, here's that lock of Bubblegum's hair you love so much," he teased as he handed his brother the blob of gummy hair he cherished.

"Oh, you," the princess laughed, finding it cute. Marceline floated behind her with an amused grin, as Finn deeply blushed.

"Ah, yeesh," he groaned, embarrassed.

Jake continued digging through the loot sack. "Here's Jakey's blankey!" he announced, pulling out his blue blanket and touching it to his cheek. "Here's your controller, BMO."

BMO's face lit up with an emoticon happy face as they took their controller out of Jake's hands, then swung it like a lasso while calling, "Yippee ki-yi yeee!"

"Marceline," the magic dog continued. "Here's your… rock shirt."

A confused expression came over the Vampire Queen's face. "Hey, that's not—!"

"It's mine!" Bonnibel interrupted, darting in and quickly grabbing the shirt, a blush quickly rising on her face. As she turned around, Marceline got to see the image on the front, and a look of surprise came over her face.

"You… kept the shirt I gave you?" she asked, herself blushing as well.

"Yeah," PB bashfully responded, chuckling. "It, uh… it means a lot to me."

"But you never wore it?" Marceline asked, confused.

"Dude! I wear it all the time!" Bonnibel declared, putting the shirt on over her dress and sweatshirt. "As pajamas!"

Pleased to see them finally getting along, although now wondering as to the length of their history together, Finn asked, "Wait… if that's Bubblegum's shirt, what're you missing, Marceline?" As all eyes were drawn to her, a look of defeat appeared on the Vampire Queen's face, while one of realization rose on Finn's. "Wait a second, wait a second! You don't have a thing!" Spreading his arms and failing to hold back his laughter, he concluded, "You just wanted to hang out with us!"

"N-no I didn't!" Marceline stammered.

"No way! You're caught! I've figured you out!" He laughed, then PB and Jake walked to his side and joined in. Grimacing, Marceline's body began to grow and shifted into a monstrous form of her normal body, with large, demonic eyes, clawed hands and feet connected to thin yet incredibly muscular arms and legs, and a face almost like a fiendish skull.

Everyone scattered and fled the room, laughing gleefully as she gave chase, bellowing after them, "I'll kill you!"

They all leapt through the door and landed in Marceline's house, then watched as she struggled to fit her enlarged form through the frame. "That's not gonna work Marcy!" Jake laughed, before plopping down on her couch.

In response, she returned to her normal form and flew through the door, and in the blink of an eye she was looming over Jake. "You wanna keep laughing?" she growled, her eyes ablaze. In an instant, the magic dog went silent as the blood drained from his face, and he began shrinking away from her—both literally and idiomatically.

"No. I'm good," he whimpered. Immediately after, Marceline burst into a massive bout of laughter, doubling over while floating in the air. Finn and Bonnibel joined in the laughter, while Jake grew back to his normal size with a cross expression.

"You guys suck!" he shoute, throwing his arms into the air and beginning to march back to the treehouse. However, this only caused the other three to laugh even harder.

Once everyone calmed down, Finn began following his brother. "Hey, Imma head back and see if I can score some of Jake's angry-spaghetti."

"Have fun!" Marceline laughed.

As Finn crossed through the door's threshold, Bonnibel called after him, "Hey, can you shut the door? I'm gonna stay here a bit." A surprised expression came over both the face of the human boy and the Vampire Queen. Seeing this, she added, "I wanna catch up with Marcy. It's been way too long since we've had time to talk."


	3. Returning to (Relatively) Normal

Marceline is shaken out of her daydream as she hears the sound of a door opening, and Bonnibel's voice ringing through the air. "Still here?" she jokingly asks.

"Where else would I go?" the Vampire Queen responds. "I can't head back to my place; your bed's way nicer than mine!"

The princess sits on the bed. "Well, if your bed's a problem, I could always get you a new one."

Marceline shrugs. "No offense, Bonnie, but your… aesthetic is pretty much the opposite of everything that's in my house."

"Well, we're pretty much opposites, but that's not causing any problems, is it?"

"Good point," she concedes, smiling.

Bonnibel slides next to her and leans against her shoulder. "I'm glad you didn't leave last night." She sighs, prompting Marceline to gently wrap and arm around her shoulders. "I wish we could hang out more. Like we used to." She looks at Marceline, the princess' deep green eyes meeting her friend's dark red ones.

"Well, I can visit more. I just assume you're always too busy. I don't wanna get in the way, ya know?"

"I'll always have time for you, Marcy. Besides, if I am actually doing something, it's always nice to have someone to talk to while I'm working." After a moment's pause, she adds, "And I also know that you're mature enough to not cause any problems."

Marceline snorts. "I think that's the first time anybody's ever called me 'mature' before."

"Well, you really are." She takes a breath and quickly adds, "In spite of evidence to the contrary."

The two sit on the bed in silence for a few moments, but a knock on the door accompanied by Finn's voice breaks the quiet. "Uh, PB? Marcy? You guys up?"

Bonnibel reluctantly rises from the bed and heads to the door. She opens it to see Finn and Jake in the doorway. "Hey guys."

"Um… hey," Finn responds. "You… wanted to see us?"

"Oh, right. Come in here." She turns to allow them into the room. "As far as I can tell, Marcy's practically in perfect condition." Hovering slightly above the bed, Marceline gives two thumbs up. "Still, I'm going to need to run a few tests. Just a precaution, ya know?"

"Okay… then why'd you ask us to come here?" Jake asks, confused.

"Well, I want you two to make sure Marcy gets home safely."

"You want them to babysit me?" Marceline snorts. "I think I can go home on my own. As long as no storms pop up, I'll be fine."

Finn agrees with her, albeit with a small amount of hesitation. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's not gonna get hurt heading home. If she flies, she can get there in, like, ten minutes."

However, Bonnibel has already turned around and started to clean the room up, loading the various smaller utensils onto one of the dollies. "It's just a precaution, guys. Besides, it's not babysitting; it's escorting. That's way more important!" She pushes the assorted medical equipment out of the way, then turns around and sees that nobody is really convinced. With a sigh, she asks, "Can you just do this? Please?"

A brief moment of silence passes before the Vampire Queen answers her. "Alright. If it'll make you happy."

"It would." The princess returns to cleaning up the room. "Alright, well, I'm gonna get this stuff cleaned up and then do a few quick tests. Then you can head out."

After two hours, Bonnibel records the information of her final test, walking through her palace's halls with her friends. Marceline, Finn, and Jake are all ready to go, the two boys especially. "Well," the princess starts, "I'll come down and give results back to you. They should be ready by tomorrow."

"You couldn't just text me?" the Vampire Queen inquires.

"I mean, I could, but I'd rather tell you in person. Besides, it's been a while since I've visited your place." She glances around at the candied walls. "I haven't been able to get out very much recently."

"Wait, didn't you spend, like, two months in your uncle's cabin?" Jake asks. "Like, you only got this place a couple of weeks ago."

"Well, yeah, but since I got it back, I've been so preoccupied with scrubbing away every trace of the fraud that stole it from me that I haven't had very much free time." She awkwardly chuckles. "In a way, your accident was actually kinda nice. At least in hindsight."

"That's awfully macabre," Marceline jokes. "I thought I'm the one who makes dark jokes."

"And I thought I'm the one who uses fancy words," Bonnibel counters.

"Fair enough."

The four soon arrive in the palace's main hall, and Bonnibel quickly flicks through her notes, making sure she's got all the info she needs. After finishing this double-check, she embraces Marceline and sends everyone off. "Don't get struck by lightning again," she jokes.

"Don't worry," Marceline assures her. "The only shocks that I'm gonna get're going to be…" She pauses and purses her lips. "I don't actually know where I was going with that."

Bonnibel giggles, then waves as everyone leaves.

A short while passes as Finn, Jake, and Marceline head north out of the kingdom. The three are silent for the most part, with only occasional banter between the latter two. Jake eventually notices his brother's silence and asks him, "Hey, dude. You've been pretty quiet, since, like, even before we left the kingdom. What's up?"

Finn blinks and shakes his head, being suddenly taken out of his thoughts. "Oh, uh. Not much." He smiles slightly, and continues with his voice low so that Marceline can't hear him. "I'm just thinking that I don't think I've ever seen Marceline or the princess that… chill with each other. And I definitely haven't seen the princess that happy in a long time."

"I know, right?" the humanoid dog responds. "I'm still weirded out seeing them just hanging out like that and getting along so well. Like, remember when they couldn't even be anywhere near each other without fighting?"

"Yeah; that only a few years ago, dude." He briefly pauses. "But d'you what's even weirder?"

"What?"

"That they've known each other way longer than we've even been alive! And they hated each other for most of that time." He looks into the distance. "I can't imagine what it would be like to hate someone who used to be your friend for so long. And then patching it up in, like, no time at all and going back to being besties?"

"Time heals all wounds, man. Besides, it's hard work hating somebody. 'Specially if you don't want to hate them."

"Yeah, I guess that's true." Finn leans backwards a bit, reclining on his friend's back. "I'm really glad that they're doing so well, though. As funny as it was sometimes, I really didn't like seeing 'em fight."

"The only time I've seen people fight that much are old married couples and really angry exes," Jake snorts, before jokingly adding, "What if they actually, like, used to date or something?"

Finn laughs, but adds, "Eh, I can't really see it."

"That's just because you're young. You've only dated like, what, two girls?" His brother blushes on his back. "I've got a sense for when people have got good chemistry. Like, I've—" he stops and coughs, before correcting, "I could've written a book on this stuff if I wanted."

The human boy looks somewhat confused as he questions his brother's joke. "But aren't they both…? How would they…?"

"Don't think about it too much. You might hurt yourself. Besides, that stuff doesn't matter. If two people've got chemistry and they're good for each other, then I say let it happen."

Finn suddenly gasps. "Dude, I know that you're joking about them bein' a thing, but that would actually explain a lot. Like, a scary amount of a lot."

"Well, at least you're not ranting and raving about me joking about two chicks being together. There's some people who'd throw a fit over a joke about it, and might actually explode if they every saw it happen in person."

The blond boy laughs. "Dude, people're gonna throw a fit over pretty much anything. Besides, these two are our friends. I don't care who they're into."

"That's good to hear." Jake says, before moving his head up to his brother's. He quietly adds, barely loudly than a whisper, "I wasn't entirely joking, though. There's some serious romantic tension between those two. I'm not sure if anything'll come of it, but I'd recommend that we be supportive of it. But, ya know, don't try to force anything in case I'm just misinterpreting signals or something. Because that can go really badly."

"Alright," Finn shrugs. He brushes some stray hairs out of his face and back into his hat. He glances up at Marceline, who hovers about twenty feet above them and appears oblivious to their conversation.

What he can't see is that she's smiling.


	4. Out of Their Element

On one of the northwestern shores of Ooo, little more than two months after Marceline's lightning incident, Princess Bubblegum stands on a sand dune, a denim jacket around her shoulders. Finn stands to one side, while Marceline sits under a parasol on the other. The Vampire Queen wears all black, including sunglasses, and tiredly slouches forwards.

The three watch as Jake and Susan load up the boat, as they prepare to go on a journey to the islands where the humans had retreated to. As Susan tosses one duffel bag onboard, a quiet mechanical voice grunts, "Ouch!" from within, although nobody hears it.

"Thanks for seeing us off, guys," Finn says, turning to the two women next to him.

"Yeah, of course," Bonnibel responds, turning to look at him. "It's my boat."

"And we care about them, ya dingus! Come on!" Marceline harshly shouts, eliciting a scowl from Bonnibel. As soon as she sees this, she bashfully turns away and quickly adds, "Sorry. Marcy is up past her bedtime." She rests her head on her hand once more, looking away from the princess.

"No, it's true," Bubblegum agrees, placing a hand on Finn's shoulder. Looking him in the eye, she states, "I want you to be really careful out there."

"Don't worry. We've got Susan," the human assures, pointing at the tank of a woman just up the coast from them.

"That's not what I mean." Finn looks back towards her. "Finn, I get the feeling that this trip's more important to you that you're letting on. I mean, if you make it to that island, you might find out some pretty heavy stuff. About the humans, where you came from… about yourself." She removes her hand. "All's I'm saying is you have to promise me— _promise_ me—that you'll come home safe."

The blond-haired boy looks at her, surprised at the serious tone of her voice. He opens his mouth and starts to respond, "I—"

"Hi, Bonnie!" a voice like Finn's, although still distinctly different, suddenly interjects, causing them to jump. Marceline glances up in surprise; she's normally the only one who calls the princess by her first name. "I'm Fern." He offers his hand, which Bubblegum shakes with a nervousness and suspicion in equal measure. "I kinda already know you. I have a bunch of… fuzzy half-memories from when I was this guy." He looks to his human counterpart.

"Just keep the ones where she's our boss," Finn states, before sternly adding, "And forget everything else!"

"Finn!" Everyone looks over as Susan calls, walking up to the group.

"Hey, good morning!" Marceline exclaims as she takes off her sunglasses, suddenly intrigued by the woman in front of her. Bonnibel feels a twinge in her chest, but externally shows no reaction.

"Boat's loaded. Ready to go," Susan states simply, gesturing with one massive hand. Finn gives the princess a hug, then goes to high-five Fern, whose eyes widen for a split second before he palms him on the nose, a look of shock appearing on both his grassy face and Bubblegum's. Marceline simply smirks.

"Gah! I flinched!" he cries, bringing his hands up as Finn rubs his nose.

"It's cool," his human counterpart responds. He quickly shakes his head, then walks down towards the dunes by Susan. He waves back at the two, and Marceline simply raises a hand in response.

As he turns his back, a cold sea breeze causes the Vampire Queen to shiver slightly. Bonnibel, seeing this, slides her jacket off of her shoulders and puts it around her friend. "Here," the princess whispers. Marceline grasps it with one hand and smiles gratefully at her.

Before long, Finn and Jake had embarked on their ship. They wave back to the three figures on the shore, while Susan wades through the water and pushes it further out to sea. "We'll be back soon!" Finn calls. "I promise!"

Suddenly, the ship heaves as Susan pulls herself in. As soon as it regains stability, Jake shouts to the shore, "Bye kids! Don't be naughty!"

"Bye! Good luck!" Bonnibel yells back to them, her left hand high above her head as she waves. To one side, Fern waves as well, while Marceline stands to the other side with one hand slightly raised, and the other holding her parasol. She's still wearing her friend's jacket. Quietly, Bonnibel says to herself, "He'll be safe," in an attempt to reassure herself.

Marceline glances to the side and looks at Fern. "Hey, aren't you the dude who totaled Starchy's motorcycle?"

He blushes—a strange sight, considering he's made out of grass—and asks, "Oh, uh, you heard about that?"

"Dude, you rode it for about a hundred feet then ran it up a tree." She leans back in the air and crosses her arms, a smirk on her face. "You're the only person who's had a harder fail on a motorcycle than me."

Fern furrows his brow. "Is… that a compliment? I don't really know what's what anymore."

The Vampire Queen shrugs. "Well, I just hope you can fight better than you can ride. Otherwise we're in some deep trouble."

"Marceline…" Bonnibel warns.

"Alright, alright." Marceline puts a hand on Fern's shoulder. "Hey, you're a grass Finn, I'd say Ooo's in pretty good hands. Besides, Finn would'a crashed that bike just as badly as you." She glances at Bonnibel. "Maybe even worse."

"Probably worse," she agrees.

A couple days later, Marceline sits on a bench in the walled garden of her friend's palace, alone and strumming her bass as she waits for Bonnibel to meet her. She'd sent her friend a text a couple of hours before, simply telling her that she had something she needed to tell her. The Vampire Queen's been planning what she'd say for several weeks, maybe even months in a more indirect sense.

She glances up at one of the clocks dotted around the city; it's five minutes past when she'd wanted to meet. Just when she prepares herself to make a sarcastic comment, the door to the garden opens and the princess strides through. She quickly scans the area, and when she sees Marceline, she beams. "Hey Marcy!" she exclaims excitedly.

"Hi. You're in a good mood," Marceline responds, grinning as she sees how happy her friend is.

"Yeah." She looks at her palm. "Remember how I told you I have candy powers now, and I can shoot candy and stuff from my hands?"

The Vampire Queen nods. "Yeah. You hit me in the nose with licorice."

"Oh, right. Sorry about that," the princess giggles. "Anyways, while I was on the way here, I accidentally shot a hole in my door with a gobstopper."

Marceline, surprised at this, begins laughing. Once she calms down enough to speak, she teasingly asks, "Was it really an accident?"

Bonnibel simply shrugs. "Anyways, what'd you want to tell me."

Suddenly, the humor fades out of the air. Marceline looks to her best friend and takes a deep breath. Everything she'd planned to say suddenly leaves her mind, all of her preparation going out the window as soon as the time came. Slowly, she begins. "Ever since the whole thing with the lightning, I've been thinking. Not just about myself—believe me, I do that more than enough. About everyone… Simon, my dad, Finn and Jake." She glances at Bonnibel. "You."

She notices her friend blush, and she pauses as she thinks about how to continue. "If you hadn't been there to help me, I might've died. And… that's a scary thought." She looks up at the sky, making sure to keep the sunlight off of her skin. "When I was human again, I thought I'd come to terms with dying. I'd given up the chance to live forever so I could live again, and I accepted that, after enough time, I would die."

She sighs, her hair being blown about slightly by a sudden cold breeze. "But when I thought that my time came, I realized I wasn't ready. Or maybe it's more that, since I'm a vampire again, I thought that I'd be able to live forever, and dying when I thought that I was immortal again is scares me. I'm not really sure."

"What are you trying to say?" Bonnibel asks, her face plastered with a combination of empathy, confusion, and worry.

Marceline looks her in the eye. "Something that I've wanted to say for a long time. Something that I've been _afraid_ to say until now. Bonnie, I—"

She loses her train of thought as a powerful gust of wind suddenly buffets her, almost thrusting her across the bench into her friend. Both women look up as a shadow passes over them, and watch as a massive cloud trailing snow and ice slowly parks itself overhead. From its center, a figure drops, bouncing off one of the trees before landing directly in front of the two.

"Hey Bubblegum!" she exclaims, her face a mask of maniacal glee. "Have you decided to reconsider my offer?"

"No!" the princess shouts, clearly recognising the person. "There's nothing you can say or do that'll make me want to join your… crazy cult."

"Who's this wacko?" Marceline asks her friend, gripping her axe tightly. "And what's she talking about?"

Bonnibel grits her teeth, clearly furious at the interloper. "Patience St. Pim. She's been trying to get Slime Princess, Flame Princess, and I to help her with… well, I'm not sure what she's doing, but it's nothing good, and none of us want anything to do with her. At least, Flame Princess and I want nothing to do with her."

"Hey, I'm right here!" Patience cries out exaggeratedly. "Don't you know it's rude to ignore people? I'm trying to be _nice_ here! I came to you _personally_ instead of sending what's-his-face to kidnap you! Why can't you see that I'm trying to help you out? You have all of this power just… sat inside of you and you're not doing anything with it!"

The Vampire Queen turns to her with a look of malice. "Back off, nutcase. If you try to touch her, I'm gonna hurt you." Embers begin licking the edge of her bass' blade. "Badly."

"Hey, who're you? I don't remember there being an _emo_ Elemental!" Patience doubles over with laughter at her own joke, as if it was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "Whaddaya gonna do? Stare me to death? Cuz if you're one of her lackeys," she points to Bonnibel, "you're not gonna do much more than that!"

Marceline feels her rage building inside of her, but manages to contain it as the flames slowly build, now beginning to spread up her axe's beard and neck. Through gritted fangs, she growls, "You should leave before you find out what I'm gonna do."

Patience snorts. "That wannabe 'Ice King' he scares me more than you, and he's as tough as a wet towel."

The head of Marceline's axe fully ignites in flame as she struggles to keep her fury restrained. "If you want to stay in one piece, you should _really_ shut your mouth and stop insulting people I care about. I've survived a thousand years here, and I've beaten more monsters than you can imagine." Baring her fangs, she snarls, "I'm the Vampire Queen and Princess of _Hell_! I've killed hundreds of my own subjects because they were threatening my friends, and if you think that I won't do the same to you, then you've got another thing coming."

She prepares to transform into a monstrous form, but a soft hand on her shoulder abates her rage. "She's not worth it," Bonnibel states, seeming to be strangely calm given the current situation. Hearing her friend's voice, her fury subsides and the flames on her bass extinguish, leaving no smoke or scorch marks. "Come on. I'll just sic the Gumball Guardians on her."

With a sigh, she casts a side eyed glance to Pim before conceding behind the princess. "Alright. That sounds good." Both walk into the palace, Marceline keeping a close eye on Pim as she raves behind them, but her shouts are quickly cut off by a scream as both Gumball Guardians reach her.

As soon as they get within the walls, Bonnibel loudly exhales and falls against the wall. "Woah, Peebs. What's up?" Marceline asks, looking down at her friend as she leans against the wall. She sees a layer of sweat over her skin, and her eyes are closed as she breathes heavily; she instantly knows what's up.

"Sorry," Bubblegum says between breaths. "But she freaking scares me."

Marceline sits next to her friend against the wall, surprised to see her so freaked out. "Do you… wanna talk about it?" she asks, the phrase uncomfortable in her mouth.

A small smile appears on the princess' face, pleased to hear those rare words out of the Vampire Queen, but it does little to hide her fear. "No, I'm…" She pauses as she sees the look of concern on her friend's face. "Alright. But not here."

Pulling herself up, Bonnibel quickly glances up and down the corridor before walking to the wall and sliding one of the bricks to the side, revealing a keypad. "Jeez, P-Bubs. How many secret passages do you have in this place?" Marceline jokes, trying to lighten the mood.

"Enough." the princess simply answers as she quickly enters the pad's code. As she finishes, a section of wall slides away to reveal a hidden corridor, which is lit by small electric bulbs suspended along hanging wires.

Brushing some stray hair out of her face, the Vampire Queen follows her friend into the passageway, and jumps slightly as the door automatically closes behind them. They climb several flights of stairs, then come out just outside of Bonnibel's bedroom. They quickly enter, then Bubblegum locks the door behind them, before breathing a sigh of relief.

She begins walking to her bed, and she asks, "Still wanna know why Pim scares me so much?"

"Of course!" Marceline responds, following her. "I care about you Bonnie, and she seems like a certified nutcase."

Sitting down on her bed, the princess looks to her friend. "About a month ago, only a bit after your accident, we had hundreds of reports of stolen wire clothes hangers. I suspected it was Ice K— Simon, sorry."

"S'alright."

"Anyways, I suspected it was him. I got Finn and Jake to check it out, and my hunch was right. After they confronted him, they followed him back to his castle and found out that he was tying them together for… some reason. He promised to return them, and I'm still waiting on him to do it. But, what's more important, is what they found. In a chamber underneath his mountain, there was an orb made out of ice that was apparently even stronger than anything the crown could make. Inside, was an old, pre-war sailboat with Patience inside."

"So that's how she knew Simon," Marceline realizes, listening intently to PB's story.

"Patience got Simon to freeze Finn and Jake, then he kidnapped Flame Princess, Slime Princess, and I, and took us to Patience. She told us a story about the Elementals, four people who embody the four elements of the world who are reborn every time they die as a new person. Then she gave us our powers… well, Slime Princess and I. Flame Princess could already do her own fire stuff."

"That's how you got your powers?!" the Vampire Queen gasps, her eyes widening in shock. Bonnibel nods. "You didn't tell me about _that_? What if you, like, catch her crazy or something?"

"Don't worry, it's fine," Bubblegum assures her friend, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I've run tests, and I can say that there's no signal or energy passing between us." She looks at her palm. "But I still have no idea how it actually _works_. At this point, magic's the best answer I have. And that's pretty much no answer at all."

She clears her throat. "Sorry, back to my story. After she gave us our powers, we managed to get away, and everything went back to normal for a bit. At least until two weeks ago."

"Wasn't that when the giant crystal origami thing attacked you?" Marceline asks.

The princess nods again. "Yeah. Also, it wasn't crystal; it was an ice construct that Pim made. I managed to destroy it, and I finally learned how to use my powers in the process, but… I caused more damage than it did." She looks at her friend, guilt written all over her face. "I hurt a lot of my own people, Marcy. And they were afraid of me. I don't blame them."

"Hey, don't think like that. You're talking like you're some sort of monster, but if you hadn't stopped that thing, it would've destroyed your whole city! Besides, you only just got your powers under control. There's no way that you could've known how strong they'd be."

"I know… but, if I'd just been a little more careful, then—"

Marceline puts her hands on the sides of Bonnibel's face and forces her to make eye contact. "You can't dwell on your mistakes, Bonnie. Believe me, I know that I should be the _last_ person to tell anyone this, but I know what it's like. When stuff goes bad, it sucks, and you want to blame yourself. But you can't, especially with something like this. She attacked you, and you defended yourself and your people with what you could use at the time. Now all you've got to do is learn and move on so that it doesn't happen again." She feels her friend's cheeks grow warm under her hands, then the princess places one of her own hands overtop of Marceline's.

"Thanks. I needed to hear that."

"No prob," the Vampire Queen responds with a smile, before removing her hands from her friend's face. "And, hey, I'm no psychiatrist, but don't think you're really afraid of Pim. I think that you're afraid of accidentally hurting someone again, and she's the one who made it happen last time."

"I hope you're right." Bubblegum lies back and closes her eyes, a soft smile on her face.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, I can stay with you in case she comes back. That way she's gotta deal with both of us."

"I'd like that."

She continues relaxing, then hears the sounds of Marceline playing her bass at the foot of her bed. As she listens for a few moments, she remembers the flames that seemed to come out of it earlier. "Hey Marceline?" she asks, sitting up.

"What's up?" the Vampire Queen responds, continuing the play.

"When you were arguing with Pim, I noticed that your bass was… lighting on fire? I haven't seen it do that before."

Marceline chuckles. "I went to visit my dad just before… well, my 'accident,' and he told me about some of the stuff he's done with it. Apparently it's actually one of the strongest weapons in all of everything. Like, I knew that he used it to fight the old rulers of the Nightosphere, but what he says it can do makes it seem like he could've done a lot more than that with it.

"I've been trying to learn more about its magic," she glances at Bonnibel, and is surprisingly not corrected for the last word, "and I found that it can light on fire. The only thing I could do with it until now was make a lightning bolt, like, once a day."

"Wow, that's actually pretty cool!" Bubblegum proclaims. "What else can you do with it?"

"Well, I can already make lightning and fire with it, but my dad says that if I get more 'attuned' to it, whatever that means, then I can actually use it to, like, immobilize people with it, or make a force field around myself. Or even turn it into a different kind of weapon, like a sword or a hammer or something." She giggles. "But I'm not sure that's my style. I mean, I'll fight with it when I need to, but I'd rather just keep it a bass that can do some cool tricks for my shows."

"Hey, speaking of which, when's your next concert gonna be?"

With a shrug, Marceline casually answers, "I've got a solo gig up in Hamburger Hills Cemetery in a few months, but beyond that I don't really know. Keila wants to do another one sometime with me soon, but she hasn't actually said anything more than that. Like, nothing about where it'll be, what songs we'll play, how long it'll be… anything!"

"Well, what songs do you have planned for your solo show?"

"Nothing concrete right now, but I've got a few ideas that I've been toying around with." She continues casually strumming her bass' strings. "The only problem is finding people good enough at the right instruments to do it. Like, I'd do another Scream Queens show, but it's impossible to get the others all here at once and willing to play. Keila's usually down, but we can't do more than jam most times, and I haven't gotten Bongo or Guy to come down since we went on tour."

"That's a shame. Hey, if I find the time to learn, would you mind letting me join you for a show some time?"

Marceline suddenly stops playing and turns around, a grin on her face. "Really? You wanna do a show together?"

"Yeah. It could be fun!"

"Dude, I'd be _so_ down for that!" She pauses, then her grin turns into a smirk. "Wait a second. I thought that you hated my kind of music?"

Bonnibel blushes. "Well, I mean… some of it's alright, I guess."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"Uh… I can't remember the name of the band. But, like, they did a lot of stuff that's really… like, I don't know how to explain it. And their singer also played the flute on a lot of their stuff."

"Ah, you're a Tull gal I see," Marceline teases. "Yeah, I figured you'd like them."

She sighs. "Yeah, you got me; I was wrong about rock music. I guess that not _all_ of it's just mindless noise."

"Dude, we used to argue about this _so_ much!" Floating next to her friend, Marceline wraps one arm around her shoulders. "But I'm glad you've come to see the light."

"Hey, don't go thinking I'm a complete fangirl like you are. From a purely musical standpoint, most of it still sucks. But I can appreciate the energy and passion that goes into it."

"' _From a purely musical standpoint'_ ," the Vampire Queen teases, floating above Bonnibel's head and doing a poor imitation or her voice. "Dude, we're talking about music, not a bit of goop in your lab."

Bubblegum sighs and chuckles. "I knew that I shouldn't have let you know I like your stuff."

"Ah, come on. I'm just teasing you." Marceline lowers onto the mattress. "I'm just glad you're willing to give it a shot. And now I'm _really_ looking forward to teaching you how to play it. Are there any instruments that you're thinking about playing?"

"Well, I've always wanted to learn to play guitar. Could you teach me to play that?"

"Yeah. Keila might get jelly, though." She pauses. "Wait, we can have two guitarists!"

"You can do that? Have two of the same instrument?"

"Of course! There's tons of bands that do it! Like, some of the best band _ever_ had two guitars; the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica, AC/DC, Aerosmith…"

"You do realize that I don't know half of those bands, right?"

"Well, I've gotta have something to lord over you, don't I?" She scooches to lay beside her friend. "I've got an acoustic that I can teach you to play on, and once you've got that down, then I'll see if I can get Keila to loan me one of her electrics."

"Thanks." Bonnibel lays down next to Marceline. "Ya know, I've actually wanted to do this for a while. Just… never got around to asking."

The weeks pass, during which time Marceline remains in the palace and watches over Bonnibel, making sure that if Pim tries anything, she'd be there. She also regularly talks with Simon, using him to monitor the madwoman. After three weeks without even the slightest hint of the insane Ice Elemental, they decide that she doesn't need to stick around.

She heads back to her home and immediately starts looking for her acoustic guitar. As she opens the door, she immediately flies to the top floor and opens her closet. She crouches down and begins pulling out various boxes and cases; she finds her old Fender, the banjolele that her dad gave her just before tricking her into wearing his amulet, her devil monster bass, and even the four-necked lunatic bass she'd gotten from Jake's son Kim Kil Whan. But not her acoustic.

Stepping back and looking around, she wonders where she'd last put it. She checks under her bed, only to find Schwabl taking a nap. Marceline smiles as she sees her undead poodle, then stands up and quickly glances around the room again. Beneath her recording station, she has one more case. Opening it up, she sighs with relief as she lays eyes on her acoustic guitar.

Taking it out of the case, she looks it over. Once she's confident it isn't visibly damaged, she sits on her bed and begins tuning it to make sure that it plays well. Strumming the strings, she soon falls into one of her favorite instrumentals, _Orchid_ by Black Sabbath, one of the biggest influences on her musical style and bass-love.

Once she finishes running through the song, she pulls out her phone and quickly texts Bonnibel.

 _M: hey got the guitar.  
M: txt me when u r ready 2 play_

In a few moments, she receives a response.

 _B: Alright. I'll come down tomorrow.  
B: Got some stuff to finish today.  
B: Princess business. Trade deals, meeting with diplomats, the usual. :P_

The Vampire Queen snorts and quickly types back to her.

 _M: laaaame!  
M: srsly tho ur gonna love this_  
 _B: Sounds good!  
B: I can't wait!  
M: cya then  
B: See you!_

Smiling, Marceline puts her phone on her bedside table and stands up, laying the guitar on the bed. "I should probably get some spare strings," she mutters to herself.

The next day, she wakes up early and prepares for Bonnibel's arrival; she gets her guitar and bass ready, cleans up the entire house, and even stocks her fridge and cabinets with snacks, although she can't eat or drink most of it.

By 10AM, her entire home is pristine and ready for a day of teaching. She sends a new text to her friend.

 _M: hey wen r u comin down?  
M: cuz im ready wenever_

She doesn't get a response, but assumes that Bonnibel's got some morning work to get done. By noon, however, she begins to worry.

 _M: u there? did u die or something?_

Again, she doesn't get a response. Nervousness rising within her, she calls Finn and Jake's house. When the call is picked up, she immediately asks, "Hey, have you guys seen Peebs? She was gonna come over to my place to hang, but she's not answering any of my texts."

"Nope," an unfamiliar voice answers, making Marceline jump slightly. "Haven't seen her since Finn and Jake left on their trip." She pauses a moment, then remembers Finn's grass-clone, Fern, as well as the brothers leaving with Susan to go to some islands where the humans now live, presumably the ones that she'd helped to save all those years ago.

"Marceline?" Fern asks. "Still there?"

"Oh, sorry. Got distracted," she awkwardly chuckles into the phone. "Well, I'm gonna go up to her place and see if she's there. Can you try to text her or something? I've got a bad feeling about this."

"Yeah, no problem." Fern hangs up the phone, and Marceline stands up, then gets ready to head out. With a sigh, she puts on a jacket and large hat, puts her bass' strap over her shoulders, then flies to the Candy Kingdom. As she quickly glides over the plains, she becomes aware of a growing sense of dread. By the time she passes the mountains that serve as the kingdom's northern border, she is nearing outright panic.

She quickly flies into one of the palace's windows and turns invisible, then systematically looks through each and every room in the palace. Unable to find her friend, she begins scouring the town, looking for any trace of the princess.

In the slums, she finds Peppermint Butler running around anxiously questioning various locals. He soon sighs and slows to a halt; it is then that Marceline appears in front of him. "Hey Pep," she says. "Have you seen PB anywhere? She said she was gonna come down to my place, but she hasn't showed up or responded to any of my texts."

"I've got no idea where she is," PepBut anxiously responds. "She disappeared in the middle of the night last night, and I've been running around all day trying to say it anyone's seen her." He sighs. "Nobody has anything useful."

"This isn't like her. She wouldn't just… run away," Marceline says, more to reassure herself than anything. "The only thing that I can think is that Pim's done something to her." She clenches her hands into tight fists and looks to the Ice Kingdom. "I swear, if she's done anything to hurt her…"

"But Marceline," Peppermint Butler begins, tugging at her jeans as she floats above him. "We don't even know that she's there. For all we know, she could be somewhere outside the city, maybe hurt."

"Maybe, but I doubt it. I think Pim's gotten her somehow."

"Surely we should at least check a few miles outside the walls, just to make sure?"

Marceline doesn't answer for a moment, before sighing and agreeing to his plan. "Alright. We'll check outside the kingdom, and if she's not there, I'm gonna tear apart Ice Kingdom until I find her, or I make Pim tell me where she is."

Immediately, even before she finishes her sentence, she darts off over the wall and being hunting for any trace of the missing princess. She weaves between the peaks of the rock candy mountains, sometimes even delving into the abandoned mineshafts within, flies through the trees as far as Tree Trunks' house, and even goes so far as to check the bottom of Lake Butterscotch.

She flies to the kingdom's outer wall and sits, staring at the frozen peaks of the Ice Kingdom and wondering if Bonnibel is truly within them. As she looks despondently into the distance, she feels a brief moment where all sound seems to be sucked from the world and the air stands still, before a pulsating burst of energy radiates from the peak of the ice palace. It slams into her, threatening to send her flying back, but she holds onto the edge with one hand, the other on her hat as the shockwaves threaten to throw it from her head.

With her ears ringing, Marceline stands up and looks around in shock, before a burst of light appears in the field directly in front of the city's front gate. It appears for only a brief moment, but burns its image into the Vampire Queen's eyes. She pushes off the wall and quickly flies over to its location, and finds a perfect circle of burned grass with Bonnibel prone in its center.

She immediately rushes to her side and rolls her onto her back, shaking her gently. "Bonnie! Bonnie, are you okay? Can you hear me?"

The princess slowly opens her eyes, and Marceline flinches as she sees them; the irises are a bright pink instead of their normal green, and any sense of compassion is absent, replaced with a sadistic, manic glimmer.

"Marcy?' she asks, before a massive grin overtakes her face. She pulls the Vampire Queen atop her in a deep embrace, surprisingly Marceline. However, she soon reciprocates, but something feels… different. As if all of the normal compassion and intimacy that is normally between them was completely absent, replaced with a single-minded devotion to trying to force caring into her.

She also notes that her skin feels different; smoother and more malleable, yet also somewhat sticky and gooey; like actual gum rather than her normal soft pink skin.

Confusion and conflict written all across her face, the Vampire Queen quickly asks, "What happened to you? Where were you? Are you okay?"

Bubblegum simply laughs as she breaks the embrace and rises to her feet, a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes plastered across her face. "Nothing 'happened' to me, Marcy," she simply answers. "I just found out what I _really_ am!" She takes Marceline's hand in hers and begins pulling her towards her kingdom. "Come on! I'll show you!"

Marceline hesitantly follows, unnerved and extremely conflicted by the entire situation. One one hand, she is certainly happy that her friend is back, but on the other, she isn't sure that it's really "her" who came back.

As they enter the city, a crowd of citizens and guards alike swarm them, all eagerly asking where the princess had been and what just happened with the blast and light, but she simply shoos them off with the promise that she'll explain everything as she determinedly makes her way to her palace. She makes the entire walk without her mask of joy ever breaking once, for even a single moment. Marceline watches her carefully, and has a strong compulsion to simply accept her behavior as natural, as she's normally a positive and caring person; but the sheer volume of it, combined with the complete lack of emotion in her eyes, makes it seem like heavily exaggerated and forced, even creepy.

When they pass through the front gates of the palace, Bubblegum briefly stops and deeply inhales. "It's good to be back home!" she exclaims, before immediately pressing on once more, Marceline in tow. Before she knows it, they've reached the upper balcony of the palace and are overlooking the entire city, with all of its inhabitants gathered beneath them. "Get ready! This is gonna be _big_ ," the princess whispers into Marceline's ear, giddy with excitement.

She clears her throat, then announces to her kingdom, "Citizens of the Candy Kingdom! I have returned with wisdom exceeding _everything_ I had previously!" Beneath her, a murmur runs through the crowd of anxious citizens. "I've learned that we exist not of beings of happiness, not of knowledge, nor of power." She spreads her arms and bellows, "We are beings of _love_ , and I will share my love with everyone!"

Bubblegum's skin begins to glow, then a wave of shimmering pink energy radiates from her skin and washes over the kingdom. All of the candy people get transformed, becoming even more candy-like, and all of the structures begin melting away and being absorbed into the central palace, which in turn, is being absorbed into the princess.

Marceline watches, horrified, and quickly flies away into the air. She feels her body changing, her skin seeming to turn into marshmallow, but her immediate powerful aversion to the transformation forces it away. "What the hell are you doing?!" she cries to her friend.

"I'm reaching my true potential!" Bubblegum responds ecstatically as her form merges with her palace. The Vampire Queen bears witness to the disturbing image of her friend being absorbed into her melting palace as the entire structure turns to an ever-growing spire made out of gum.

She stares at the visual in front of her, paralyzed by shock, and is aware of the energy radiating out from her, warping the land for several miles outwards from the abominable spire and candifying everything it touches. As the transformation finally finishes, the top of the spire seems to shimmer, before Bonnibel's face emerges from its pink, gummy surface.

Looking over the transformed landscape, Bubblegum smiles warmly—although her eyes remain just as cold as ever—as admires her dominion.

The energy touches Marceline, the sensation shaking her out of her shocked stupor. She reels back in aversion as it begins transforming her, with forming white, spongy blotches along her body, and a sensation like an itch beginning to nag in the back of her mind. However, she returns to normal in a matter of moments, and a look of shock arises on Bubblegum's face.

She shakes herself out of her shocked stupor, then flies up to the top of the spire and gets in the princess' face. "Bonnibel! What's all of this? Have you lost your _mind_?!"

A shocked expression appears on the princess' face, but it soon returns to the normal faux-glee. "What this? It seems I missed someone." Arms form out of the gum in an extremely unnerving visual. "Well, no matter. You'll feel our love soon enough." She spreads her arms out, pink energy pulsing from her hands and slowly spreading towards Marceline.

As it reaches her, the Vampire Queen reels in aversion as she begins transforming as well. White, spongy growths appear on her skin, and a sensation like an itch begins nagging in the back of her mind, compelling her to give in to the changes. She cries out as the changes spread up her arm, but they fade just as quickly as they appeared. A look of shock appears on both women's faces, although Marceline's quickly turns to a look of determination.

"I don't want any of your so-called love," she growls. "I'm sick and tired of the people I care about going crazy or disappearing on me, and you know what? You've done both of those to my best friend. You're not fooling me; you aren't sharing your love. You just wanna take over Ooo, and I'm not going to help you with your deception."

Bubblegum's face changes to a mask of betrayal, almost making the Vampire Queen feel bad, but her eyes still glimmer with the cold calculus of a dictator. "How could you say something like that Marcy? I thought that we were friends?"

"You're not my friend," Marceline says, sneering. "You're a bastardization of my best friend, and you're lucky that you're inside of her, otherwise you'd be a puddle of bubbling carmel on the ground." She gives one final scornful glare, then disappears from view as she turns invisible.

The instant she fades from view, she flies straight up and into the clouds, her hat flying off in her speed, and her conviction breaking. Her eyes tear up, and she struggles to keep herself from breaking down. She quickly breaches the clouds and looks down at Ooo; four large blotches mar its landmass, each emanating from a specific area; a pink region from the Candy Kingdom, which she just left, a grey one from the Fire Kingdom, blue from Ice Kingdom, and green from Slime Kingdom. Each one slowly spreads, almost at a crawl from her viewpoint, but still with enough speed that all of Ooo would be covered within a few days.

"Jesus…" she remarks, evoking a long-forgotten name as her eyes dart around to the four elemental zones. For a brief moment, she contemplates running away, potentially heading to one of the random islands dotted around the vast ocean, or even flying off into space—she can survive without air, after all—but quickly abandons the idea; that would be a coward's move.

Her eyes are drawn to the Ice Kingdom, and a sensation of rage overcomes her. Still invisible, she sets her jaw and begins flying towards the frozen peaks, quickly increasing in speed. She swings her axe in front of her, its blade immediately igniting as her hands wrap around its neck. Her fury continuously growing, she struggles to keep her thoughts in order as she blasts through the air fast enough to create a slipstream behind her.

Within a few moments, she reaches the freezing air of the kingdom, and as she passes over the snow, a strong sensation of melancholy buffets her like a wall, threatening to overwhelm her mind with hopelessness, but her unadulterated rage is more than enough to keep her pressing on, the compulsion no more than a minor annoyance. A pair of large, batlike wings sprout from her back, and she feels her body trying to shift more in her fury, but has just enough sense left to keep herself in her normal form.

She streaks over the snow, now visible and ignoring the searing pain every time the sun touches her skin in the absence of her hat, with her eyes trained directly on the main palace. With a ferocious shout, she smashes through one wall and screams, "PIM!" She quickly scans the room, but the entire chamber is devoid of life; there's not even any Gunters wandering around. With a roar of fury, she slams her burning axe into the nearest wall, obliterating it immediately and opening up another room, just as empty as the first.

Fueled solely by her wrath, she tears through the entire palace, destroying walls, icy stalagmites and stalactites, furniture, and anything else that happens to be near her path with reckless abandon until she comes across a large fissure in the ice, with a smooth tunnel nearby. She flies into the tunnel and streaks through it, her axe cutting a long, jagged scar along its edge, and the ice melting around her.

As she nears the tunnel's edge, she sees a perfectly smooth sheet of ice, likely put in place by Pim so nobody can enter her chamber. Marceline, screaming in rage, smashes through it with her axe without difficulty, then stops in the air at the top of the chamber. Her eyes immediately lock onto Pim, who had fallen into her boat in terror, and she glares at the cowering Elemental.

"I don't know what you did that fucked everything up," she growls, not bothering to restrain her tongue in the slightest, "but you're going to undo it."

Patience stares up at her, her fear visible even with her large sunglasses, and stammers, "I-I don't—"

"Don't bother making any excuses!" Marceline screams, cleaving through a stalactite with her axe and making it fall but a few inches from Pim's body. "I know that you caused whatever's happening to Bubblegum, and if you don't fix it, I'm going to hurt you so badly that you're gonna regret crawling out of your lil' ice ball." She spins her axe in her hand, its supernatural flames slowly melting the ice that makes up every surface of the room.

Her eyes terrifiedly trained on the dual-blades of the burning axe, Patience tumbles out of the boat and backs towards the opposite wall, sputtering in fear. "I-I can't undo m-my spell!"

"What?" Flexing her fingers against her axe's handle, Marceline snarls, "Tell me that you didn't say what I think you just said."

Pim takes a breath, but remains rooted to her spot against the wall. "I can't fix this." She gestures to the other side of the room. Marceline risks a glance, taking her focus off of Patience, and sees a block of ice with Betty—Simon's pre-war fiancé—trapped inside. "I tried using her as a battery to power the ritual, but _she_ messed it up. Her magic's too… chaotic."

"Well, it seems that you've got a problem. You screwed up Ooo _and_ drove my best friend crazy, and to top it all off, you can't help to fix it." She waits just long enough for her statement to sink in; after a couple seconds, Pim realizes her intention.

In an instant, she's on the neurotic Elemental and viciously swinging her axe, aiming straight for her head. Patience desperately shoots a beam of ice at the blade, and although it has no effect where freezing is concerned, it knocks off the Vampire Queen's swing just enough that it slashes through the ice a few inches from of its intended point of impact, the arcane flames licking Patience's hair.

She capitalizes on this brief moment to put some space between herself and the enraged vampire, then attempts to freeze her. Marceline feels the numbing cold of Patience's ice rays as they slam into her side, but bellows in fury as she rips her axe from the wall and shatters the ice without difficulty. Fueled by her rage, she dashes across the room and attempts to slash Pim again, but swings wide in her hysteria.

Marceline continues to chase Pim, a frenzy of cleaving swings raining down against her, but the Elemental's magic and madness keep her just out of the way of the Vampire Queen's reckless barrage. She keeps on the assault in spite of this, every time she thinks she has an opening, the madwoman finds a way to avoid her attacks.

Eventually tiring of this, Marceline changes up her attack with a strong kick the Pim's stomach, catching her off-guard and staggering her. She follows this up with a clubbing blow with the flat of her axe's blades to her face, knocking the blue-skinned Elemental back and throwing her shades across the room, revealing a pair of cold, icy eyes.

With a desperate cry, Patience releases a final blast at Marceline, who swings her axe and slashes through the cone of cold with the burning blades, then turns it around in her hands and plays a single discordant chord. A bolt of lightning streaks from the headstock of her bass and strikes Patience in the chest, blasting her backwards into a wall and imbedding her body in it. Marceline marches across the room to her and brings her axe back, ready to swing it into Pim's exposed body.

"Wait," the elemental croaks, bringing her head up to look at Marceline. "There's one way that you might be able to stop this."

"Why didn't you say anything _SOONER_?!" the Vampire Queen fumes, slamming her axe into the ice directly above Pim's head.

"I—" she roughly coughs, a small amount of dark blue fluid spurting from her mouth. "I thought I could take you." After a moment's pause, she explains, "I overrode their personalities and minds with pure elemental energy. They're completely—" she falls into another coughing fit, more of her icy blood being thrown from her mouth, "—completely bent of spreading their elements. But if you can draw them out, there might be a way of returning them to normal."

"And if I can't make them stop acting like psychopaths?"

Pim smirks in spite of the pain she's in. "Then they're stuck like this."

The Vampire Queen snorts, then slings her bass' strap over her shoulders once more. She turns to leave, but glances at Pim in the wall, then quickly delivers a final punch to her jaw, knocking her out cold. She leaps into the air and tears through the tunnel, then back to what was once the Candy Kingdom.

As soon as she can see the gum spire, Marceline stops and is once more besieged with the compulsion to accept the change—accept her love. She also notices that the face is gone, leaving only a sleek pink surface; she's not sure if it makes her more or less uncomfortable. From this distance, she doubts if she'll be able to draw out the real Bonnibel. What if she's not even there anymore?

She forces the thoughts out of her head and prepares herself to do whatever needs to be done—to reveal anything, no matter how personal—in order to bring her friend back. Continuing her flight, albeit far slower, she tries to plan what she'll say, but eventually decides to just wing it. Beneath her, many candy people mill about, mindlessly wandering around and being sickeningly sweet to one-another; kindness for the sake of kindness, with no compassion to speak of. Above her, the sky begins growing darker as the sun sets, making it easier for her to avoid being burned without her hat.

Marceline stops in front of the tower, with nervousness, fear, and anger all fighting within her, and any confidence she had built up on the flight over gone. "Bonnie?" she quietly says, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

There is no response.

Clearing her throat, she tries again, louder this time. "Bonnibel!"

The front of the tower begins to shift, and soon the mask of Bonnibel's face rises through its surface. "Oh, Marcy!" she exclaims, beaming her crocodile smile. "You're back! Have you decided that you need our love after all?"

"I don't want any of _your_ 'love', and I sure as Hell don't need it" Marceline sneers. She looks into the bright, cold pink eyes, desperate to see even the faintest streak of green. "Please Bonnie! You've gotta fight this!"

"What are you talking about? You don't need to fight me; I'm spreading love!"

The Vampire Queen furrows her brow. "I don't care what you _say_ you're doing. You're just a manipulative blob of gum wearing her face." She pauses, taking a long breath. "Please. I just want her back."

Bubblegum looks somewhat concerned, but Marceline doesn't acknowledge her. Looking down to the ground far below, she continues. "After how long we've known each other, after everything we've done—first building your kingdom, then fighting for centuries, finally being friends again—I didn't think that it would lead to _this_!" She glances up at the face and sees a mask imitating sympathy, but also a complete lack of memory regarding the stretches of time she mentioned.

Noticing this, she grows angry. "Do you even remember anything from before now?!" she demands.

"Of course I do! Earlier you were being very—"

"Before the elemental stuff!" Marceline interrupts, before pretending to suddenly remember an example. "Like when I tricked Finn into putting wolves in your bedroom?"

"Yes! I remember that!"

"Really? What did you do after that?"

This throws Bubblegum off. "I…" she begins, furrowing her brow as she tries to access the memories of pre-Elemental Bonnibel. "I, uh…"

"You exiled him… for all of about a week," the Vampire Queen responds scornfully. "How about we try something easier? Do you remember when the Door Lord stole a bunch of our stuff? What did he take from you? Or me? Or anyone, for that matter?"

Again, Bubblegum fails the answer.

"He took the shirt I gave you—the _real_ you—when some dill weed spilled soda on your other one at a concert I took you to when we first started hanging out. And he tried to steal my bass, but _I_ was actually good enough to fight him off." She glares at the tower-face. "How about a super easy one? One that you'd be able to get if you were even the tiniest shred of the person that you _stole_ from me."

"I didn't steal anything!" Bubblegum cries, but her complaints fall on deaf ears.

"What is my last name?" She watches as the face on the tower desperately tries to dredge up any memories of her real self, and she's sure that she sees some tiny vestiges of green peeking through the pink in her eyes. Seeing this, her anger takes a backseat. "Could you at least just let me talk to Bonnie one more time?"

The candy Elemental refocuses on Marceline once more. "What do you mean?" she asks with a Cheshire Cat grin. "I _am_ Bonnibel!"

"No," the Vampire Queen states, "you're not. You're a lying, fascist caricature of my best friend. You're just all of her worst aspects driven crazy with magic, with enough of a parody of her real self to hide your rotten core."

"Marcy…?" the tower starts in a tone so seemingly full of genuine pain that it makes Marceline wince. She looks into her eyes, and is sure that there's more green than before, although it is still vastly overpowered by the pink. "Why are you acting like this?"

"Excuse me?" Marceline spits. "Why am _I_ acting like this? You're the one who's all hopped-up on elemental magic and acting like a damn dictator!"

Bubblegum flinches as the Vampire Queen curses. "There's no need to be so vulgar!" she exclaims, looking absolutely shocked.

"What's wrong?" she mocks. "Does it offend you? Is a one-syllable word _that_ upsetting to your virgin ears?" Marceline crosses her arms. "But I guess I'm just in your way. Isn't that right? If I'm not willing to submit to your magic sugar sparkles, then that means I'm just your… problem…" She trails off as she remembers how much that insinuation had hurt Bonnibel before.

In the Elemental's eyes, the green continues growing, with the balance almost equal between the two colors.

Silence remains for almost a full minute before Marceline's emotions finally break. Tears begin falling down her face, and she starts legitimately sobbing, and legitimate worry rises on Bubblegum's face for the first time since she became a slave to her powers.

"Bonnie… why does this always happen to us?" she cries. "Please, I love you. I always have, even when we weren't talking. But every time I think we have a chance, something always happens." She continues to shed large, heavy tears, her emotionally pained sobs the only sound between the two. Suddenly, the energy in the air and the itch in the back of her mind fades, and Marceline looks up at the tower.

Through her tears, she sees her pupils dilate before the face fades, and the entire spire begins the shudder. Her eyes widen, tears still falling from them, as she watches a bulge form directly in front of her. It presses outwards, then splits as Bonnibel's body falls forwards and immediately begins to plummet down the height of the tower.

"Bonnie!" Marceline cries, diving after her. Halfway down the height of the tower—about thirty feet from the ground—she manages to get beneath her friend and catch her with a loud grunt. With teary eyes, she whispers, "Bonnie! Is it you? Are you…?"

The princess opens her eyes, and her friend smiles with relief as she sees them to be entirely green. "Marcy! You…" She glances back up at the gum tower, which seems to be in the process of being drained of color. Making eye contact with the Vampire Queen once more, she matches her grin and then embraces her. "Please. Let's get as far away from here as we can."

"Sounds good," she responds, still crying, although now the tears of those of joy rather than sorrow. She begins to carry her friend away from the tower—with almost all of the candy people watching on in confusion—but Bonnibel stops her.

"Wait, before we go," she starts, blushing and smiling. Marceline looks at her, confused, but gasps as Bonnibel wraps her arms around her neck and pulls her in for a deep kiss. She initially is stunned, unable to react, but soon reciprocates. While their lips remain locked, she slowly floats away from the source of the candy elemental corruption. "I love you too," Bonnibel finishes once they finally break their kiss.

The two stare into one-another's eyes, but when they're barely a hundred feet from the spire, it pulses with energy and immediately begins pulling the princess back towards it. "Marcy!" she cries in shock and desperation, wrapping her arms around the Vampire Queen as soon as she begins getting pulled away.

Marceline turns around, keeping herself between Bonnibel and the spire as she tries to continue moving away. "I won't let you go!" she shouts, keeping a tight grip on the woman in her arms. However, the more she pulls against the force, the harder it pulls. Soon, she's being slowly pulled towards it, in spite of her best efforts.

As she is pulled closer and closer to the spire, she looks at Bonnibel with alarm, who returns her look of panic. "I can't… get away…" she cries, sweating and grunting with exertion.

Just after she says that, the force grows exponentially, yanking both women towards the spire. Marceline slaps against its soft, gummy surface, trying her hardest not to let Bonnibel touch it, but the princess is pulled off by suddenly-animate tendrils of gum.

"No!" both women cry out at once. They clasp their hands and pull as hard as they can, desperately trying to get free of the tower's grasp. Their grips slip, and the princess is pulled under the surface of the spire, and the vibrance returns to it almost immediately. With a shudder, it releases a final burst of energy, propelling Marceline almost ten feet backwards.

"Give her back!" she screams, trying to rush back to it, only to be stopped by a wall of force. "I just saved her! You can't take her again!" She repeatedly slams her body into the invisible barrier, her eyes cascading tears. In her mind, every time you hits the barrier, a sensation best described as being forcefully alienated repeatedly overtakes her, only further fueling her anger.

She finally tires after nearly an hour of slamming herself, as well as her axe, and even candy people, into the barrier. "Why did you have to take her away again?" she moans, weakly pounding her first against it. "What do I need to do? Why can't we just be together?"

Marceline pauses and looks at the tower, then down to the candy people below, milling around in ignorant bliss. "Would you let us be together if I gave in?" she desperately pleads. "Is that what it'll take?!" She tries to hit it again, only to find that the barrier has vanished. Hesitantly moving towards the spire again, she discovers that she is no longer being repelled.

Bonnibel's face appears on the spire once more, smiling again, but this time with genuine happiness in her eyes—although it could simply be her despair masking the reality. "You're ready to feel my love?" she asks.

Marceline hesitates, but her hopelessness and longing is too strong. She slowly nods, and then the Elemental beams. "I'm so happy that you've finally decided to join me and stop…" she averts her eyes, "being problematic." After an awkward moment of silence, she perks up again. "Come on! I've been waiting for you to help me spread my love all day!" Her arms grow out of the gum once more, and again begin emitting their elemental energy. This time, as it touches Marceline, she allows the change to occur, staring despondent off at the horizon.

The final thought in her head before she loses herself are five simple words.

"We didn't do your lesson."


	5. Fallout

_'It's been 2 months since Finn & Jake, Simon & Betty, and LSP fixed Ooo. A lot of people blame Bonnie and the others for everything that happened (I guess they never heard of Pim?), but at least they've been to keep everything under control since then. Well, they've managed not to go to war with anyone and they're all still alive. Still, there's been two failed coups against Flame Princess, a riot outside the entrance to Slime Kingdom, and Bonnie's been talking about a rebel movement in the Candy Kingdom. She says it's nothing dangerous and that she's known about it for months now, but I'll keep an eye out. I mean, I can survive pretty much anything, but if something happened to her… I don't know what I'd do.'_

Sighing, Marceline puts her pencil's eraser in the corner of her mouth as she rereads what she's written in her journal. She begins doodling in the margins as she wonders what else to write, then quickly adds an addendum.

 _'Still, it's hard for me to look at her without hurting. I spilled my guts to her and told her how I really feel, and I actually managed to get her back… she told me that she felt the same way, and she kissed me! But then she got taken away (because why wouldn't she?), and now she doesn't remember any of it. It really hurts that we were so close, and now we're right back to where we were before. I can still remember, but I'm afraid to tell her again. Both times I thought we had a good chance, it ended up getting taken away. At least we're still talking this time._

 _I guess I'll just act like nothing's wrong and hope everything turns out fine. So, same as normal, right?'_

Dropping her pencil and closing her journal, Marceline notices that she's almost all the way through her journal. Sighing, she looks through the window at the far side of her room. Outside the cave, she sees the long shadows of the setting sun. The Vampire Queen contemplates visiting Bonnibel. Before she can decide, she jumps as her phone on her bedside table vibrates.

She floats across the room and picks it up. There's three messages from Bubblegum.

 _B: Hey, just realized that we never got to do our guitar thing._  
 _B: Mind if I come over tonight and we can play?_  
 _B: Or, ya know, I can probably make a fool of myself trying?_

Marceline smiles and types her response.

 _M: dude its like 10pm._  
 _M: dont u think its a little late 4 that?_  
 _B: Nah. It's been an easy day today, so I've been able to sleep in._  
 _B: Besides, I feel bad that we didn't get to play before… you know._  
 _M: alrite. come on down wen ur redy._  
 _M: ill get the stuff out_  
 _B: Be there in a bit!_

Floating off her bed, Marceline grabs her bass and the acoustic, then takes them downstairs. After half an hour, Bonnibel arrives, wearing her leather jacket over a dark t-shirt and jeans, and a bag on her back. The Vampire Queen watches through the window as she walks up to the door, then quickly opens it before she even knocks. "Hey Bonnie!" she exclaims.

"Uh, hey!" Bubblegum replies, surprised. "Were you just waiting behind the door for me to get here?"

Marceline shrugs. "I didn't have anything better to do. Didn't take long to get ready, ya know?"

"Yeah, I get it." The princess walks into the house and looks around with a smile. "It's been a too long since I've been in here."

"Hey, whatcha got in that bag?"

"Mostly snacks; chips, energy bars, soda. All the good stuff. I brought a couple notebooks, too."

Marceline notices that the bag is pretty much full to bursting. "Jeez, girl. How many snacks did you think you'd need? You could survive nuclear winter with this much stuff!" The princess giggles and shrugs. "Well, I guess you can make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa."

Bonnibel takes off her bag and puts it on the floor next to Marceline's couch. "Since when could you speak Spanish?"

"That's pretty much all I know," she chuckles. "But, I _do_ speak fluent French."

Her eyebrows raising, the princess looks on in surprise. "Really?"

"Vous le sais." Marceline floats around her friend, her hair spreading out like a crimson cloud. "C'est fou ce que tu apprendras dans mille ans."

Bonnibel laughs. "I've got no idea if you're actually Frenching right." As she says this, she blushes as she realizes what she'd said.

Marceline opens her mouth to tease her friend over the comment, an inappropriate kissing joke on the tip of her tongue. As she takes a breath, though, she flashes back to the kiss they'd shared in their final moments before they were both candified.

"Can you hear me? Marcy, what's wrong?!" Bonnibel cries out, looking at her friend with clearly visible worry. The Vampire Queen gets shaken out of her flashback with a jolt.

"Huh?"

"You kinda blanked out on me there." The princess nervously smiles. "You good?"

"Oh, yeah. I'm fine," Marceline responds, blushing and rubbing the back of her neck. "Just… still a little shaken up after the whole thing with Pim and the elements and… that whole mess. Ya know?"

"I get it," Bubblegum responds, looking somewhat relieved. "I think everyone's still kinda messed up from it." She sees a look of pain in her friend's eyes. "I'm sorry that I can't remember anything. Everything after Pim kidnapped me is just a blur, but if you ever wanna talk about it, I'm still willing to listen."

"No, I'm fine. I just need some time to sort everything out." The Vampire Queen lifts her two guitars up. "Now, we gonna play or what?"

With a smile, the princess graciously takes the acoustic. "Yeah. Let's do this." She follows Marceline to an empty spot on the floor, and the two sit down.

"Now, first things first, let's see if you know how to hold the guitar," the raven-haired woman teases. She watches as her friend pulls a slightly confused expression as she places the body of the guitar against her right leg and brings her right arm over it, while gently wrapping her left hand around the neck. Marceline smiles. "You got it. You'd actually be surprised how many people don't actually know how to hold a guitar."

Bonnibel chuckles. "Seriously?"

"I'm serious," the Vampire Queen responds, before returning to her lesson. "Most acoustics actually have six strings, but I prefer four. Just fits my style a bit better. The main reason most guitars use six is because it gives a better range of notes without having too many that it gets excessive. Most of them go E-A-D-G-B-E, but since mine's only got four, I usually just don't use the E's. Sometimes I'll restring it to give it more range, and some of my other basses have more string. But that's for another day."

Bonnibel nods and presses each string in sequence, from thickest to thinnest. "So this one's A?" Marceline nods. "Then D-G-B?" Again, her friend nods. "Okay. That doesn't seem that hard."

Over the next several hours, she teaches the princess the basics of playing guitar; fretting, proper string etiquette, and the like. By the time they take a break, it's already 2AM. "You're a fast learner, Peebles. You'll be ready for the stage in no time."

Bubblegum blushes and giggles. "Thanks, but I think you might be overestimating a bit."

"Come on, you're a natural! Besides, even if it turns out guitar isn't your thing, there's tons of other stuff that you can try. I mean, you can already play trumpet really well and it wouldn't be hard to fit that into a song."

"Well, I did actually bring something from home," the princess says as she walks to her bag.

"For real? Whatcha got?" She watches as her friend lifts a small black case, then opens it to reveal a flute. Her eyes widen and a grin appears on her face. "You can play flute? Dude, that's super cool! But… when'd you learn?"

"It was long time ago." She looks at Marceline with an amused glimmer in her rich green eyes. "Who'd you think taught Finn how to play?"

A look of understanding comes over the Vampire Queen, before she snorts. "But… didn't he suck at it for years?"

"Dude, I started teaching him when he was, like, 10. Besides, he wasn't really interested in playing, ya know? I mean, Jake loved that he was learning to play something, but Finn was more interested in… well, you know."

"Oh, right," Marceline chuckles. "That woulda been when he was super-crushing on you." She sighs. "It was pretty funny how obvious he was with it. And he thought nobody knew about it. Remember when I got him to, like, put wolves in your room and all that stuff?"

"Yeah, I remember." Bonnibel says with a scowl as she puts together her flute. "That wasn't funny, you know."

"Yeah, maybe the wolves themselves weren't that funny," she agrees. "But seeing how easily I got Finn to do it? _That's_ what's funny about it. He was so desperate that he did whatever I told him." The Vampire Queen giggles as she remembers that night. "And Jake made him wear that stupid lute-suit-thing."

Bonnibel joins her in laughing. "I don't know, I kinda liked it."

"Really?" Marceline cocks an eyebrow with a teasing smile. "I seem to remember you laughing as soon as you saw it."

The princess shrugs as she finishes putting together her flute. She makes her way back over to where they had been practicing a few minutes earlier. "You know Black Satin Dancer?" she asks with a smile.

"Of course! You sure you wanna do that one, though? There's a lot of innuendo in there, you know." She smirks at her friend.

Bonnibel snorts. "I've had to listen to your jokes for 500 years, Marceline. I think that I can handle a little bit of innuendo. Besides, I've listened to the song a ton of times, and it's never bothered me at all."

"Well, in that case…" Marceline gestures to her friend. "It starts with flute. You take the lead."

"Gladly." She brings her flute up to her mouth and blows over the mouthpiece, quickly playing the intro to the song as her friend plays her part on bass.

 _"Come, let me play with you, black satin dancer. In all your giving, given is the answer…"_

The next several hours are little more than a jam session. They finish their song and start playing through Bouree, but don't even get all the way through it before it gives way to the two simply playing music together without a real theme to go by, or even the slightest care as to how good it ends up sounding. They only stop around 2AM, when Marceline notices the princess yawning and having trouble handling her flute. "Hey," she says, "maybe you should get some sleep."

"Nah, I'm good. Let's keep—" Bonnibel gets interrupted mid-sentence by a deep yawn. As it ends, she giggles and tiredly looks at her half-undead friend. "I guess I could do with some rest."

She quickly puts away her flute, then Marceline scoops her up in her arms. "Come on up!" she says as she floats up to the upper floor, before playfully tossing her onto her bed. "You can have my bed for tonight. It's only fair, since you let me use yours for, like, three days straight."

Bonnibel smiles gratefully at her. "Thanks. But where are you going to sleep?" Marceline smirks at her, making the princess blush. "You're not gonna…?"

"Not gonna what?" the Vampire Queen teases as she floats towards the princess. "Not gonna share the bed with you?"

"Hey, if you wanna share, it's fine with me. Just make sure to keep your hands to yourself." Nonetheless, she still blushes deeply at the thought.

"Nah, it's fine. I don't even usually sleep on that thing, anyways. I'm just gonna be up here." She rolls over in the air, looking down at her friend as her hair forms a canopy overtop of them. "That way I can watch you."

Bonnibel giggles and blushes. "Hey, you know I don't like people watching me sleep."

"I'd like to see you stop me." She widens her eyes with a goofy grin on her face. "These peepers gonna peep."

"Stop!" Bonnibel laughs, bringing her hands up and trying to cover her friend's eyes. Marceline laughs as well and maneuvers herself around to avoid her gaze being blocked. She begins playfully swatting away her friend's hands, and soon enough they're playfully wrestling on the bed—or, in the Vampire Queen's case, above it.

Suddenly, when one swipe goes wide, Bonnibel catches her friend by the wrist and quickly pulls her from the air. She presses her face-down into the mattress and immediately climbs onto her back and pins her down. "Whatcha gonna do, Marcy?" she teases as she holds her friend down.

Pretty much unphased, Marceline laughs and says, "This!" as she quickly rises back into the air, now with the princess on her back. As she feels her unwilling passenger lose balance, the Vampire Queen maneuvers herself through the air and ends up reversing their positions, then plops her friend down, dropping her face-down into the bed. "How'd ya like that?" she taunts, pretending to dust off her hands.

"I don't know," Bonnibel responds as she glances over her shoulder with a cunning glimmer in her eye. "How do you like _this_?" She rolls over and wraps her legs around her friend's upper body, just below the arms, then quickly lifts her up in a complete, fluid arc and dropping her on the other side. Not missing a moment, she mounts Marceline's chest and grabs both of her forearms, pinning them down above her head.

As she pins down her friend on the bed, their eyes meet and a moment of awkward, still silence overcomes them. They both blush, but neither of them try to stop the predicament, either.

After what seems like an eternity, Marceline awkwardly chuckles. "So… interesting weather we've been having." Bonnibel laughs at the joke, doing with just as much awkwardness as the grey-skinned woman beneath her body. She releases her arms and quickly dismounts her friend, sitting beside her with a great deal of embarrassment.

"Uh, sorry about that," she nervously chuckles.

However, she only sees a look of admiration on her friend's face. "Dude! Where'd you learn to do that?!" Marceline pauses, then quickly adds, "The flippy bit, not straddling me. I _know_ where you learned that one."

"I've been taking a few classes. After I got possessed by the Lich, I got really paranoid about something happening to me." Marceline eyes widen. "I actually did a lot because of it. Some of it was actually good in the long-run, like increasing the number of banana guards and making their training much stricter." She takes a breath. "But I also did some stuff that was… questionable. You probably noticed the sphinxes on one of the towers?"

Marceline nods. "Yeah. They're having an… eyeball duel, or something. It's kinda creepy."

"That's probably the biggest failure I had. I made the first one, Goliad, to be my heir if something were to happen to me. But she was incredibly unstable, dangerous even. She got all of my insecurities, but also all of my smarts, and she has mind-control powers. I had to make another one, Stormo, to stop her. He's actually made from Finn's DNA, and luckily he got his bravery and heroism and not some of his… other traits."

"Like what?" The two women make eye contact, then Marceline realizes what she's talking about. "Oh, right. I feel like it might've been bad if there were a bunch of tiny psycho-sphinxes running around."

"Yeah it would've. Anyways, I pretty much realized that the best way to keep myself safe was just to learn how to fight without any of my gadgets. I got so used to having my laser guns and my ball blam burglerber and all that stuff that I didn't could barely defend myself without them. So I decided to learn to fight without a weapon."

"Smart," the Vampire Queen says, raising one hand. "Shame you can't just do this." She causes long, jagged claws to form out of her fingers, then retracts them. "It makes fighting way easier."

"Maybe we could duel sometime," the princess proposes. "Then we could see if that's true."

"You just wanna make me stop flexing on you, don't you?"

Bonnibel smirks. "Maybe just a little bit." She then yawns, a deep and contagious one.

Marceline yawns as well, then says, "I guess we should probably get some sleep."

"Yeah… I guess."

Bonnibel rolls onto her side as Marceline levitates off the bed and turns off the lights, plunging the room into darkness. "G'night Peebs," she whispers.

The princess smiles warmly in the darkness. "Goodnight Marcy."

Later, long after the sun rises, Marceline is the first to awaken. She notices that, sometime during the previous night, she'd lowered onto the bed. Not only that, but Bonnibel had also unconsciously latched onto her in her sleep, one arm limply draped over her chest and the other one hand gently grabbing her arm. In spite of the mild confusion, the Vampire Queen can't help but smile as she looks at her friend's sleeping face.

This happiness only lasts a moment, however, for as she stares, the image of the gum-spire face flashes into her mind, prematurely ending her moment of bliss.

Shaking the thought from her head, she slowly moves Bonnibel's arms and tries to leave the bed. As the bed shifts, the princess groans in her sleep. "Come on, Bonnie," she whispers. "Marcy's gotta get up."

Once she frees herself from her friend's sleepy grasp, Marceline floats down the ladder and into the living room. She stretches her arms and cracks her back, then looks around the room. Her bass and acoustic are both leaned against the wall. Bonnibel's flute lies on the couch, while her bag is open and on its side just in front of it. Several wrappers and soda cans are scattered around the room, and the princess' jacket is discarded on the arm of the couch.

She quickly picks these up and throws them away, then opens up her fridge. Inside, almost everything is red, specifically for her to drink the color from; apples, tomatoes, strawberries… the list goes on. However, tucked away within the fridge, she keeps a bit of food in case of company.

Marceline grabs a case of eggs, bacon, milk, a variety of veggies, and an assortment of other ingredients, placing them all on the counter, before grabbing out her cooking equipment. She preheats her oven as she gets ready, then smiles. It's been a while since she's had a legitimate excuse to cook something.

She cooks for almost forty minutes, and a little before it finishes, she notices Bubblegum climb down the ladder in the living room. "Morning Marcy! What smells so good out here?"

"Breakfast," Marceline simply responds, turning around to face her while keeping an eye on the food in the oven.

"I could've guessed _that_ ," Bonnibel sighs. "But what's for breakfast, exactly?"

"You'll just have to wait for that, missy," the Vampire Queen teases. "It's almost done, anyways." She looks to the oven timer, which reads just over a minute left.

"Alright, I'll be patient. I know it'll be good." Bubblegum leans against the counter and sighs, taking in the scent of the cooking food.

Marceline chuckles. "This is my first time cooking anything in months, actually. I might be a little out of practice." The oven beeps, then she dons her baker's mitts and removes a muffin pan full of food from inside.

As she raises it up, her friend's eyes light up. "You made those little bacon-and-egg muffins?" she gasps. "I _love_ those!"

"Well, I made 'em just for you." Marceline places the pan on the counter and removes her gloves, then goes about gingerly moving the muffins from the pan to a plate while Bonnibel watches over her shoulder, salivating. "Hey, you don't need to wait for me to get them all out," she laughs. "Just be careful. They're hot." Ignoring this, the princess immediately grabs one of them and takes a bite, closing her eyes and slowly chewing it up, savoring the taste. "So?"

Bonnibel swallows the bite and beams. "Dude, this is so good!" She takes another bite, digging into the muffin..

This makes the Vampire Queen laugh. "Well, there's plenty more where that came from." She watches as her friend devours her food, and in a matter of moments, half of them have disappeared, but the princess has also slowed down

Finishing her ninth one, she leans back against the counter and sighs. "I missed your cooking so much."

"Well, I miss cooking in general." Marceline smiles as she comes up with a not-so-devious scheme. "How'd you feel if I were to come up to your place every so often and cook for you? I could even teach you some of my recipes."

"Is that even a question?" Bonnibel jokes. "If I could eat your food every day, I don't think I'd need anything else to be happy. I'm surprised you haven't set up a restaurant or something."

She simply shrugs. "Too much work. Also, I'd need to deal with people to do that, and me plus people is a bad combination."

"What about your concerts? Tons of people come to those, and there aren't usually any problems."

"Well, I'm not actually dealing with people then. Like, I'm playing music for them, yeah, but I don't really need to, like, talk to them. Besides, music's my passion, so it makes it a bit easier."

The princess shrugs. "I guess that makes sense. But I can see where you're coming from. I've gotta deal with people all day, pretty much every day, and it's exhausting."

The two simply hang out and chat for a short while, before Bonnibel grabs her bag and decides that she should get back to her kingdom. "I probably shouldn't be gone for too long before everything calms down."

"Alright. I'll take ya back, if you want."

Bonnibel starts climbing up the ladder to the upper floor, her bag over one shoulder as she heads towards the bathroom. "You don't need to do that, Marcy."

"I know, but I don't have anything planned. Besides, you came down here to hang, it's the least I could do."

She sees her friend smile at her before she gets onto the top floor. With a smirk, she whispers to herself, "I hate to watch her go, but I love to watch her leave." After a moment, she begins cleaning up her kitchen, putting away the food and filling up the sink with hot, soapy water to let the dirty dishes soak. Marceline puts the remaining plate of muffins into a plastic container for Bonnibel to take home.

By the time the princess comes back down, the kitchen is once more spotless. Marceline's also changed her clothes, putting on a hoodie and some gloves for the journey.

"So, ready to head out?" she asks as she sees Bonnibel come down, her face and hair cleaned up and in a new change of clothes—likely another thing that she'd packed in her bag.

"Yeah. Let's go." She grabs her jacket and puts it on as Marceline hands her the remaining muffins, then the two leave the caves and begin making their way across the plains. The Vampire Queen decides to go the entire way on foot, rather than flying.

Midway through the walk, Bonnibel gets a message and pulls out her phone. "Who ya talking to?" Marceline asks. "Should I be jealous?"

"Nah, it's just Flame Princess. I've been asking her and Cinnamon Bun for permission to do some experiments. I've been wondering if CB's heightened mental state was a physical change or a genetic one. Ya know, if a clone of CB would be like the current one or like he used to be."

"Oh, that's pretty cool," Marceline responds. "So, still wanna do a show with me?"

Bonnibel grins. "Yeah! I had a lot of fun last night. I'm not sure how long it'll take before I'm good enough to actually go on-stage, though."

"You'll be ready in no time." She shrugs. "Besides, if you're not confident on guitar, then you can always do flute and we can do some Tull covers."

"I'd like that," the princess responds with a smile. "Also, then I wouldn't be competing with Keila for guitar."

"Like I said, lots of bands have had two guitarists. As long as you both have your own styles, it should be fine." Marceline pauses. "I'm only asking because I've actually gotten the date for my Hamburger Hills."

"It took this long?"

"Yeah. The elemental stuff really screwed everything up. I've been tearing my hair out trying to make sure that they didn't just cancel it."

"Well, when is it? I'll come if I'm not busy, but I'll probably be pretty loaded for a while, since everyone needs someone to blame for everything going crazy and I'm…" She sighs. "I'm unfortunately in that position."

"It's next month, on the twenty third."

Bonnibel groans. "Agh, that's when I'm meeting with Slime Princess and Flame Princess to talk about our response. We're thinking that if all three of us can respond together and throw in a few gifts and trade deals, then we can finally calm this down." She looks to her friend. "That's, like, the one thing I can't miss."

"I understand," Marceline says somewhat sadly. "Well, I've already got my entire show planned out, so at least I won't need to change anything." Her face brightens as she has an idea. "Hey, what if I got somebody to set up some cameras? I could record the show and send you a copy. "

"You'd do that?"

"Yeah, as long as I can find someone willing to set them up. Besides, there's always fans who'll sneak in cameras and just put up the show online, so you should be able to find it without too much trouble." A mischievous grin rises onto her face. "I might even slip an extra song into my routine for you… but you've gotta guess which one it is."

Bonnibel giggles. "Two questions. First, are you gonna try to embarrass me with it? And second, is it going to be something I've heard before?"

"Maybe to both. It's a cover, but if you read into the song you might get a little perturbed. For the second, I dunno. Doesn't seem like your kind of music, but who knows?" The princess giggles again. "Hey, what's so funny?"

"I just didn't expect to her you use the word 'perturbed,' much less use it correctly."

"I can use whatever words I like! Besides, this is all assuming that you can actually see the show and that you guess the right song."

The two continue on their way, chatting and joking together. Once they get close to the kingdom, Marceline notices that something's wrong: there's a shape moving up the castle wall, clearly headed for her friend's bedroom window. "Hey, Bonnie. Something on your wall," she says, pointing to it.

The princess quickly sees it, too. "What are they doing?"

"I don't know, "she says while turning invisible. "But I know how to find out." Quickly flying over the outer wall and buildings, she closes the distance in a matter of seconds as Bonnibel runs through the streets far behind and beneath her.

The figure wears a hooded cloak and appears to be short and somewhat round beneath it, yet also flat. She grabs the figure by the arms and pulls them off with little difficulty, and is surprised at how light they are. They struggle in her grasp, but with little chance of actually freeing themself. Their hood falls off in their flailing, revealing them to be leaf-like in appearance.

She uncloaks and brings the figure down to the ground, holding them in front of the princess. "A leaflan?!" Bonnibel gasps. After an annoyed grunt, she tells her friend, "Take him to the guards. I'm gonna interrogate him later and find out what this is all about."

Once the leafy intruder is taken away, Bonnibel sighs. "Would you mind staying here for the day? Just… turn invisible or something and make sure nobody else tries to get in here or, like, attack me?"

"Yeah, I can be a counter-stalker for ya."

For the remainder of the day, Marceline remains at the princess' side, invisibly watching for any threats. However, none present themselves. The day is mostly made up of her friend entering various meetings with representatives from various kingdoms, almost all of which demanding recompensation for damages potentially caused by the elemental stuff. In one particularly boring meeting, she actually dozes off, reliving something from only six months prior.


	6. Varmints

Flying through the air in a red-and-white letterman's jacket, a pair of bat-like wings sprouting from her back, Marceline hummed to herself as she went to visit Bonnibel. As she flew over her kingdom, she ignored the various wax-orange blims and banners scattered around proclaiming the rule of the King of Ooo.

She streaked through the air towards the palace and landed in the window, knocking on its interior. "Yo Peebs," she cheerily whispered. "You wanna make a midnight Squeez-E-Mart run? I'm gonna suck the red outta the customers' bloodshot eyes!" She paused to laugh. "Psyche; I'll probably just get a slushy." She cocked an eyebrow as the pink-haired figure in the bed failed to react to her incursion in the slightest. Bonnie normally woke up easily when she visited. "Bubblegum?"

Marceline took a few steps towards the bed, then placed her hand on the figure's shoulder. "Bonnibel!"

The figure in the bed rolled over, revealing a waxy orange face with a golden moustache-goatee combo, and the pink hair shifted on his head, making the Vampire Queen realize it was a wig. She immediately realized who was in her friend's bed: the fraudulent King of Ooo.

Both began shouting in shock, but disgust replaced it in Marceline's voice as she realized, not only was he in her friend's bed and wearing a wig modeled after her hair, but he was also wearing her nightgown. Meanwhile, his shout turned to a sing-songy vocalization.

"What are you doing here?!" Marceline demanded, thrusting her finger at the wax man.

"Be not afraid, child," the wax idol responded, rising to his feet atop the mattress. He spread his arms and continued his speech. "It is I: the one true Princess of Ooo!"

The Vampire Queen growled as her left hand transformed into a large, furred claw and she attempted to slash at the false ruler. "Where's Bubblegum!" The self-proclaimed King of Ooo leapt over her attack, leaving a pillow to suffer the brunt of it, feathers flying out and scattering across the bed.

"Woah! Relax!" he chortled as he landed. He began bouncing on the bed, Marceline's head bobbing as she tracked him. "Bubblegum is fine, just fine." The King of Ooo smirked. "And deposed! And powerless! So crushed by defeat was she that the tyrant exiled herself to a sad cabin one the shores of Lake Butterscotch—technically still Candy Kingdom territory. But!" He takes a moment to extravagantly bow. "In my mercy, I've allowed her to remain."

Marceline snarls "You're the princess? Since when?!"

"Hmm…" the KOO pretends to think, tapping his scepter against his chin. "By the reckoning of my new Torontian calendar—Ooo's official calendar—uh… two glorious months."

"Two months," Marceline repeated, shocked. "But… then why didn't she t—" She growled in annoyance, shoving her hands into her pockets. "Bubblegum." She leapt through the window and transformed into her demon-bat-form, flying towards the lake.

Behind her, King of Ooo shouted after the Vampire Queen—actual royalty, in spite of her lack of subjects—with a conceited tone in his voice. "Tell Bubblegum I sleep in her nightgown! Tell eeeeveryoooone!"

She streaked through the night sky, over the kingdom, making a beeline towards Lake Butterscotch. There, she found the cabin to be newly renovated and a patch of sizeable pumpkins to be growing off to one side. Changing into a more demonic form of her normal self, she dropped from the air with enough speed to cause a piercing whistle around herself.

A moment later, she slammed into the ground, making a small crater and a large dust cloud. "Bonnie…" she growled in a distorted voice. She saw the former-princess on the porch, wearing jeans with leather boots, a polo shirt, and a green-and-white hat. A shotgun was across her lap.

"Marceline," Bubblegum responded casually, raising up a hand. "What up?"

"Why didn't you tell me you got throne-jacked?!" the black-haired woman demanded. "I got to hear it from that wax fraud!"

She paused her rant she heard a metallic click from behind herself. "Be cool Marceline," Peppermint Butler glowered, pointing a shotgun at her back. "Let's all be real cool."

"Give us a minute, Peppermint Butler," Bonnibel ordered. With a nod, he ran off, grunting with every step in a military-like fashion.

Marceline put her hands on her hips and stared annoyedly at her friend. "Well?"

"I didn't get jacked… I quit," the former-princess answered, looking slightly diminished. "But yeah… alright. I should've told you. I was just…" she sinks into her chair, "embarrassed. And it all happened so fast." With a sigh, she adds, "I'm still trying to sort things out." Marceline's face softens as she is overcome with empathy. "See things rationally."

"Huh," the Vampire Queen grunted, kicking at the dirt before floating beside her friend on the porch. "Well, you could've talked to me about it."

Bonnibel laughed. "Hah, 'cause you're so dang rational! Ha-ha!" Her smile quickly dropped from her face. "I'm sorry. That was mean. I'm trying to be less mean." She looked out over her pumpkin patch. "That's why I'm startin' fresh with a new kingdom out here. Just me, PepBut, some pretty stars…" An angry expression rose on her face. "Oh, and of course: some varmints!"

"Varm—"

"Varmints!" PB interrupted, standing up and hoisting her shotgun. "Raiding my pumpkin patch." She kicked a pumpkin on the side of the porch. Several large bite marks were taken out of it, and the flesh was mostly gone. "Every dang night! After all my sweet bioengineering?" She shook her head and muttered, "The nerve of these varmints," before pulling back on the fore-end and sternly concluding her speech. "Not tonight."

She sat back down on her chair, squinting her eyes as she peered into the darkness. Marceline whistled. "So… how long're you gonna sit out here for?"

"Long as it takes," Bonnibel replied stoically, pumping her shotgun again."

"Uh… alright. Yeah!" Marceline exclaimed, bringing two fists up in an attempt to pump herself up for what she imagined to be a night of sitting and waiting. She leaned back with a smile on her face, ready to spend the night with her friend.

Bonnibel looked at her, surprised to see Marceline of all people willing to spend the all night watching pumpkins with her. "Umm… yeah!"

After an hour without any sign of trouble, the Vampire Queen begin softly slapping at her puffed cheeks, making raspberry-like noises to a basic tune, punctuated with clicks of her tongue. "These must be pretty good pumpkins, huh?" she asked, trying to make conversation.

Bonnibel didn't take her eyes off of her pumpkins. "They're citizens of my garden kingdom. A hundred-percent loyal garden citizens."

Remembering something amusing, Marceline chuckles. "That reminds me, I was in the Grocery Kingdom last Sunday—cuz, uh, free samples. Ya know? They had these, like, shrimp cocktail dealies? So good! I was sucking the sauce out them them and hucking shrimp at the ceiling… I kept going back for more and more samples. I could not stop myself." She begins gesturing with one hand. "I don't know, man. Shrimp must've gone bad or somethin', cuz all that red came right back up."

A quick glance revealed Bubblegum chewing the inside of her cheek, clearly wondering where the story was going.

"Still invisible and yacking all down the produce aisle!" A gleeful expression finds it place on her face. "It was awesome!"

Bonnibel laughed "Hey, you remember that one time—"

Before she can say any more, some bushes on the far side of the property begin rustling, grabbing their attention. Rising from her chair and pumping her shotgun, the former-princess shouted, "Hey!"

From the pumpkin patch, three creatures rose up. Their bodies were segmented like ants, but limbs were very similar to human arms with hands in the place of feet, and their mouths were equipped with a full set of teeth, again very human-like. No eyes appeared to be present, and a dark brown carapace covered their upper bodies, overtop of leathery brown skin.

They muttered and grunted amongst themselves, before one rose up on its hind legs and snarled, revealing a large, bumped yellow tongue.

"Varmints!" Bonnibel shouted, firing a shot off at them. The energy beam blasted out, lighting up everything around its path, but all three managed to evade it. Before she could take aim again, they fled. "After them!"

Both women gave chase, tailing the varmints down the hill the cabin was perched atop and into the forest below. They weaved through trees and other obstacles, managing to close the distance somewhat. Ahead of them, Bubblegum saw a large hole that the creatures were rushing towards. "Varmint hole!" she shouted, turning a dial on her gun. The display on the side changed from 'blast' to 'battery.'

"Ah, nuh, nuh," she grunted as she pulled the trigger. This time, the beam found its target. As it slammed into the rear varmint, it shrieked before disappearing in a flash of light, being replaced with a battery. Marceline picked it up, wondering how her friend had figured out how to do that. "A ding-dang varmint hole!" PB groaned beside her, pulling out a flashlight. "I can't believe my sweeps didn't find it!"

"Well, you found it now!" Marceline responded, trying to remain positive. She handed the battery over, the former-princess putting it into her light. "So, what's next?"

Bonnibel put the flashlight in her mouth so she would have both hands free for her shotgun. "Next, we dig." She turned the dial again, putting it onto 'tunnel' mode. As she pulled the trigger, a thick energy beam blasted out and dug a hole in the ground. Both women traveled down it, Bubblegum keeping it stable while also keeping an eye on the energy levels.

It soon blasted through a brick wall, two two exiting into an abandoned tunnel. Large rock candy crystals jutted out of the stone, and rusted minecart tracks ran along the track. "Hmm, looks like a delivery tunnel from the old rock candy mines," Bubblegum observed.

Marceline flew around excitedly. "I haven't been down here in hundreds of years! Remember when I'd get you out of those stinky cheese kingdom trade meetings?" She dusted off a wall, revealing a worn graffiti-drawing of her bat form. "And we'd sneak down here and spraypaint the walls?"

"Umm, I'm pretty sure it was me who found you vandalising my property," Bonnibel corrected, but grinned nonetheless.

With a laugh, the Vampire Queen flew behind her friend and put her hands on her shoulders. "Yeah, but I got you to tag something, didn't I?" Her friend blushed as she began floating down the tracks. "I bet I could find it… Here, come on! We used to follow the minecart tracks. Cracking jokes, telling stories…" They found the end of the tracks as they come across a large chasm, although the rails continue on the other side, clearly broken apart by the fissure.

"Woah! The broken bridge!" Marceline exclaimed, floating across to the other side. "Remember? You jumped across this!" She chuckled. "You were so scared."

"Hmm… I think I was just trying to prove something," Bonnibel quietly countered. She pressed a button on her watch and the undersides of her boots began to glow. The former-princess was lifted a few inches from the ground and casually glided across the chasm, a cocky expression on her face.

"Bonnibel Bubblegum: always sooo prepared," Marceline teased.

"Yeah! I always have to be 'always so prepared'! We can't all just 'wing it'!" Bonnibel responded angrily, making air quotes. She saw Marceline look visible hurt, and her enmity faded almost instantly. Blushing, she rubbed her arm. "I didn't have to worry about so many things, you know? The Candy Kingdom used to be so small… so manageable," she explained, gesturing with her hands. "Then it kept growing and growing, and there was always some new disaster to prepare against!"

"Is… that why you stopped talking to me?" Marceline asked sadly, rubbing the back of her neck.

"No! I—" Bubblegum started, before a loud boring sound stole both of their focus. They glanced at each other fearfully, before a determined expression rose on Bonnibel's face as she donned her shotgun. She turned the dial to its final setting: '2-gun' mode. She pulled the trigger and a second gun, identical to the first, formed at the other end of the barrel. She snapped it in half, dual-wielding guns now, with their lengths reduced to pistol-size.

Marceline, meanwhile, transformed into a large badger-like form, her long black hair remaining and falling over her face as she hissed loudly.

"Bring it on you darn pumpkin munchers!" Bonnibel shouted, taking a knee and leveling her guns as Mareline took position behind her.

From the chasm, a massive varmint with ten long, anthropoid limbs coming from its body, which lacks the individual segments of the smaller ones. Two sets of teeth are present within its mouth.

"It's a frickin' mother varmint!" Marceline gasped, both women looking on in surprise. The mother varmint licked both sets of teeth, then swung its tail over its head like a scorpion and fired off several goo-covered eggs, which imbedded themselves into the rock around the women's feet. A brief moment later, they hatched into several new varmints, which came to the defense of their mother..

"Marcy! Cover me!" Bonnibel shouted, but the Vampire Queen was already on it, crushing varmints between her clawed hands.

"No problem!" She began crushing any varmints that got within her reach, making sure not to let any get to her friend.

The former-princess, meanwhile, opened fire on the mother varmint, screaming as she released a barrage of energy blasts. They slammed into its hide, but had little effect. Soon enough, they began hollowly clicking rather than firing as the energy depleted. She tossed them over her shoulders with a dismissive "Pshh!" as she drew a knife and smaller energy pistol, also known as the classic action-hero combo.

With a defiant scream, she rushed the scourge and leapt into its mouth. Marceline paused her attack momentarily, staring on with wide eyes. A moment later, the side of the semi-insectoid beast exploded in a shower of green gore as Bonnibel leapt out, and the Vampire Queen breathed a sigh of relief. As she ran away, the ex-princess through her knife behind her, imbedding it in the head of a smaller varmint.

Recovering from her shock, Marceline swatted one pest out of the air and stomped on another. Near the chasm's edge, the mother varmint growled and moaned as is flesh knit back together, and a new set of limbs sprouted out of its side, prompting a disgusted groan from PB. It noticed the badger-like creature killing its young and leapt into the air, trying to pin her down.

"Marceline! Look out!" Bonnibel shouted.

"Huh?" the Vampire Queen grunted. She saw the scourge coming down from above her and immediately reacted, slamming her head into its soft underbelly and bashing it into the ceiling, shattering its teeth. It fell on top of her, making her crack her head on the stones and revert to her normal form, dazed.

"Marcy!" Bubblegum cried, rushing to her side and pulling her from beneath the mother varmint. She began dragging her down the tracks as the Vampire Queen slowly regained her bearings. Down the tunnel, the mother varmint regrew its teeth and snarled as it began thrashing around, smashing the interior of the tunnel. Marceline groaned and brought one hand to her head, regaining consciousness as Bonnibel shouted, "She's going to bring the whole tunnel down!"

More eggs rained down around them as they broke into a sprint. Bonnibel turned and shot some varmints over her shoulder, only for them to be replaced by their brethren. "Yeesh!" she grunted.

Suddenly, one lunged for her, trying to take her head off. She ducked and managed to keep her head on her shoulders, but couldn't stop it from tearing her hat off.

"My snap-back!" she shouted, reaching for it as the varmint violently tore into it, only to have Marceline grab her arm and pull her towards a small alcove in the wall. It was too small for the mother varmint to get through, but it didn't stop the smaller ones.

"In here!" the Vampire Queen shouted, flying into it with her friend right behind her. As they cleared the wall, the mother varmint slammed into the wall behind them, roaring furiously as its children crawled in. Bonnibel threw a small contraption at the opening, sticking it to the stone as it generated a green, semi-opaque hard light wall. Two varmints managed to get past before it blocked off the entrance.

Bonnibel shot the first one, splattering it against the wall, but as she tried to fire on the second one, her pistol clicked hollowly instead of firing. Just as it leapt for her, Marceline caught it with a clawed hand, then reverted it to normal and shook off the blood. Outside the forcefield, the mother varmint and her spawn continued smashing at the wall, viciously trying to get in and devour them.

"You got any more gadgets?" Marceline asked.

"Um…" Bonnibel began digging through her shirt pocket, tossing out various bits of junk. "Some bandages, a pen, unpaid internet bill, and, uh… strawberry lip balm." Her friend grabbed the last item from her hand and popped the cap off, consuming the red before handing it back to her friend, who discarded it with the rest of her stuff. Bubblegum glanced around the room. "Maybe we can find something useful around—" She suddenly shouted as she saw the far wall.

Marceline followed her gaze and saw the cause of her shock: a very nearly-written tag on the far wall. "Your tag!" she exclaimed, floating over to it. "We actually found it." She laughed as she traced one of the letters with her finger. "Man, your handwriting hasn't changed at all! Still as prissy and prim as— What?"

She stopped as she glanced back at her friend, seeing tears streaming down her face. She quickly flew to her side, apologizing. "Hey, h-hey! Woah, wait! I didn't mean… I-I like your handwriting! I think it's really… pretty." She blushed as she said this, her cheeks flushing in a stark contrast against her blue-grey skin.

"It's… it's not that," Bonnibel cried, before burying her face in her hands. "I lost my hat."

"We can… get you another hat," Bonnibel proposed, knowing full-well how lame and empty it sounded.

"I lost my hat…" PB continued. "I lost my home… lost my people. I can't even keep darn varmints out of my pumpkin patch!"

"Oh, Bonnie!" Marceline desperately wanted to cheer her friend up, but didn't know what to say. "You're—"

"I tried. I really, really tried. I just… I thought that if I just shut everything out and just… focused on the work, it'd all be okay." The mother varmint smashes into the wall again, tiny bits of stone raining down on them. "But look where that landed me. All I managed to do was push everyone away." She looks to her friend, looking extremely upset. "I pushed you away. I'm sorry, Marceline. I've been a real dinger to you."

The Vampire Queen put a hand on the ex-princess' shoulder. "Come on, what are you even apologizing for?" A small smile appeared on Bonnibel's face. As she opened her mouth to respond, a chunk of rock fell from the ceiling, although both women managed to dodge it. "Uh, how about we not get buried under a metric ton of rock candy rubble?"

Another rock fell, this one smashing into the device keeping the wall up. Almost immediately, it began to dissipate. "The field generator!" Bubblegum cried. A swarm of varmints began pushing against the wall, threatening to break through as the pink-haired woman nervously tried to come up with some means of escape. "Ah jeez. Okay, maybe I can rig up a graffiti bomb, or a rudimentary rock candy cannon, o-or a—"

Marceline floated beside her and placed an arm around her shoulders. "This time," she began as she swept her hair back, "I'm prepared." Another varmint leapt at them, only to meet the Vampire Queen's boot. "I've been watching these dudes pretty close. I think I can varmint-style dig us through the wall." She floated up slightly, looking at the graffiti wall. "It's just a shame about your tag. I don't wanna mess it up.

Bonnibel smiled at her friend's consideration. "Nah it's good I think." She narrowed her eyes and put on a gruffer voice. "Mess it up!"

Pulling her arm back, Marceline shifted her arm into a massive varmint, then swung it forwards and began tearing it through the wall. "Dig-dig-dig-dig-dig!" she screamed as the main bulk of the varmints bursted through the remains of the barrier behind them.

"Yo varmints!" Bonnibel shouted. "You hungry? I'll eat you! I'll eat your mom! I'll eat your eggs! I'll—"

"Whoop!" Marceline interrupted, grabbing her around the waist and flying through the newly-made hole. Behind them, the cave wall collapsed, trapping the varmints as they swarmed the room. The mother varmint had its head through the entryway, roaring in fury while the remainder of its bulk remains on the other side.

Several minutes later, Bonnibel exited the cabin and handed her friend a red rubber ball. "Thanks," Marceline said, before sucking the color out of it and tossing it away. "Boing!"

The princess sat down next to her, her face pale and placid. "I'm crazy tired, Marceline. I think I have been for a long time." She sighed, her voice quiet and slightly hoarse. "But those varmints are still out there, waiting."

"Eh, worry about it tomorrow," Marceline advised. "I'll keep a look-out tonight. I will watch the heck out of this pumpkin patch! Come on!"

Bonnibel yawned. "Okay, maybe for a bit." She leaned against her friend's arm, surprising her. "Don't let me sleep too long. Promise to wake me up in fifteen minutes…"

The Vampire Queen smiled. "I promise," she said quietly, but her friend had already fallen asleep.

In the distance, Peppermint Butler called to them, "Uh, can I come back now?" as the two sat on the porch in near-silence, save for the sounds of the night: crickets chirping without a tune, the grass being rustled by a soft breeze, and a cacophony of other soft, soothing noises.

Marceline chose not to respond, instead vigilantly watching over the pumpkin patch. She fulfilled her promise as well, waking her friend after fifteen minutes. The ex-princess tiredly conceded to the urging of the Vampire Queen, deciding to sleep through the night.

"Don't worry," Marceline assured her. "I'll still be here in the morning, even if it means getting a little burned."

"Thanks, Marcy." Bonnibel soon nodded back off to sleep, and her friend picked her up and carried her to her bed inside the cabin. Once she was situated, Marceline returned outside and kept her watch.

That morning, as the sun was beginning to rise, she went inside for some protection from the light. She quietly shut the door, trying to do so quietly, and heard the sounds of her friend rising from her bed. As the former-princess walked down the stairs, she asked, "Marcy? You still here?"

"Yep," Marceline responded, watching through the window from an angle where the sunlight can't reach her.

She heard PB laugh. "I'm surprised you actually stayed the whole night."

Bonnibel watched her friend shrug. "I didn't have anything better to do," the Vampire Queen said casually.

As the former-princess made her way towards the half-vampire, she giggled again. "I doubt that." She came up behind her friend and embraced her. "But I'm glad you're here."

Marceline smiled at this. "Hey, it's no problem." As the sun rose outside the cabin, she yawned deeply, tired after being up all night.

"I think it's your turn to sleep," Bonnibel giggled, breaking the embrace. "You can have my bed tonight. I don't want you out there when its…" She gestured out the window.

"Thanks," Marceline said gratefully, making her way up the stairs. "I'll be out of your hair once it's dark again."

"You say that like I don't want you here."

"Yeah, I know." She walked up the stairs, flashing one final grin at her friend before she passed out of view.


	7. Adrift Among Open Stars

_"Life is lonely, but unlikely, too…"_

A little more than a week on from the capture of the Leaflan, Marceline sits in her house trying to come up with new songs for her upcoming show. She'd told Bonnibel that she had it all planned out, but that was a lie; with only a few weeks until her performance, she's only got three songs ready. Of them, two are covers, and one is one of her older songs.

 _"So take my hand and we'll be fine."_

Bonnibel had released the Leaflan after some interrogation, but learned nothing from him, save that he was a prince of his people. At least, nothing that she'd told Marceline.

 _"Together see the world anew…"_

As she tries to write music, the smell of nachos slowly pervades her house. Finn and Jake laugh loudly in the kitchen, messing around as they cook.

 _"And watch the stars align."_

Marceline grunts and gives up on the song. _"Lonely, but unlikely. Yeah, yeah-yeah. Marcy has no talent. Woah, woah-woah."_

She tosses her bass onto the couch beside her and whips her music journal onto the ground, shouting angrily. "No, no, NO! Pointless and boring and bad!" Fury coursing through her veins, she uncaps a liter-bottle of soda and dumps it out, sticky carbonated liquid spilling over the pages and blurring her writing.

"Who— hoahh, Marcy!" Finn exclaims, leaning around the door, before nervously asking, "How's the song coming along?"

Her eyes literally ablaze, Marceline crushes the bottle in her hands, splitting the plastic along the neck in the process. "How do you think?" She sits back on the couch and kicks the bottle away as Finn cowers back behind the wall.

The human walked out from the wall somewhat hesitantly. "Aww, don't slam your jam! Your songs are great! Stupid great!"

"That's just the thing, Finn," Marceline groans, picking up her wet and sticky journal. "My old songs were different—I was inspired to write them! They came from within!" She stands up and begins pacing around agitatedly. "Ever since the tour, people expect new, better songs! From an even deeper and more complex part of my soul!" She glances at a picture on the wall above her couch, a band photo of her, Bonnibel, and the rest of the Scream Queens. "It's been years since then, and my fans haven't calmed down. Every time I do a show without any new songs, they tear it apart. And my new singles are all hit-or-miss at best."

She sits down. "But my soul has been—"

Her voice breaks as she flashes back to her brief moment of solace with Bonnibel from months prior. This had been progressively happening more often, and it's gotten to the point that she can barely see or think about her without it happening.

Marceline swallows and refocuses herself. "It's been bored and complacent for months now. And all the craziness over the past six months hasn't done anything but confuse it." She throws her arms out towards the kitchen door. "I've been stuck eating nachos with you and Jake!"

As soon as she mentions the magic dog, he walks out of the kitchen with a plate stacked high with nachos. "Rea-dy!" he announces, eliciting an annoyed glare from the Vampire Queen.

"What am I supposed to write? A 13-opus about beans and cheese?!" Finn and Jake glance at each other as she throws her head back and groans, dramatically throwing one arm over her eyes. "It's hopeless! How am I supposed to live up to anybody's standards?!"

"I'm right there with ya, Marcy-Marce!" Jake concurs, plopping onto the couch beside her with a plate of nachos. "That's why I don't try to live up to any standards! I impress myself by just obeying my most basic instincts!"

"With all due respect, Jake, I need more than a tight existence game."

The humanoid dog fills his mouth with nachos. "Eh, whatever."

A soft electrical hum and the smell of ozone begins permeating the room, but nobody in the room seems to realize it. "My brain's stuck in a vacuum of past knowledge! I need new sights… experiences… stories!" she cries out. "I need…"

The lights in the room go out and are replaced with a bright blue glow from a few sparks dancing along the ceiling. "Woah!" Finn yells as Jake leaps over him. A split second later, an electrical bolt arcs down and strikes both the half-vampire and the human on the couch.

"G-good instincts… nice instincts…" Jake whimpers in the corner, watching his friends convulse for a moment before being thrown away from one-another. Finn slams into the floor in front of the couch, while Marceline is launched through the window.

Meanwhile, in the Candy Kingdom, Peppermint Butler slowly pushes open the door to the princess' lab. Atop his hand, he carries a sandwich on a silver platter. A "Please Knock" sign is hung on the door, with a plank reading "NO Knocking!" overtop of it, and finally a sticky note reading "You know what… just…" stuck to that.

"Princess…" Peppermint Butler nervously says as he enters the darkened room. He sees her looking into her telescope, as she's done constantly since releasing the Leaflan prince. "You know I value your honor, and respect your choices unfalteringly…"

Not looking up from her telescope, Bonnibel asks, slightly annoyed, "What do you want, Peppermint Butler?"

"It's just…" he starts as Bubblegum grabs the sandwich, "is a public insult really that insulting if you're the only one who can see it?"

The princesses turns to him with an annoyed expression—and crumbs—on her face, interrogatively grunting. "Don't you know the first thing about insults? It's actually more insulting.

"M-maybe to you, but…" Peppermint Butler stutters, holding the platter to his chest.

"The leaflans aren't even interested in astronomy! They're totally bored with the great beyond!" she continues, ignoring her butler as she rants. Lowering herself to her telescope's eyepiece, she adds with a grumble, "But they knew I'd be checking."

Written out of small asteroids and bits of orbital debris, the leaflans have written the words "Bubelgum is a hairy scab."

"I never should've freed that leaflan prince. He could've rotted in the dungeon for all I cared!"

Peppermint Butler nervously wrings his hands. "Our relations with the leaflan kingdoms are strained at best! We really shouldn't provoke them anymore!"

"We're not provoking…" Bonnibel responds, looking to a large object somewhat resembling an electrical cannon with a large pink orb on the end on the other side of the room. "Just cleaning up the trash."

Above her, one of the fluorescent lights goes out with an electrical decrescendo. The other soon follows suit as the princess looks around in surprise. "Blown circuit?"

"For Glob's sake!" Peppermint Butler groans.

Bubblegum walks over to the window. "I bet someone tripped over the power supply." She leans out, but the large power cable is still plugged into its socket. "Uh… there must be some interference. Where's it—"

As she looks up the cable's length, she sees a large electrical blast running up the power supply with a piercing voltaic shriek. The princess stares with wide eyes for a moment, paralyzed by shock, before whirling around. "Get down!" she cries. "This place is gonna—"

Before she can finish her sentence, the wall of the lab erupts with blue light as electricity begins streaking through its sugary material. She dives behind her desk, using her body to protect Peppermint Butler while the sparks climb all over the lab, the heat and energy cracking the structure apart. A flash of red streaks past her face as PepBut cries, "My clip on! Oh the shame!"

There is a brief moment where the electricity seems to stop, before the walls are suddenly thrown apart, chunks of candy-concrete being blasted outwards and littering the area around the foundations, which still pop and spark slightly. Only the table, the cannon-like contraption, and the two figures who were within the lab remain. Bonnibel furiously looks around, her clothes ripped and singed and her hair frazzled, trying to find anybody to blame. "When I find out who did this…"

"Careful, Princess," Peppermint Butler advises, trying to calm her down.

She ignores him and rises to her feet. "Is this what the Leaflan really had in store?! I'll have every last one of them—"

An orb of electricity flies towards the princess, and for a moment she stands completely still, rooted to the spot and looking on in terror. It stops about ten feet from her, however, and the princess notices a figure within the pulsing orb. "Marceline," she whispers in shock, her throat suddenly dry as she witnesses her friend's body encased in the electricity, her eyes closed and muscles twitching. The sphere suddenly changes direction and darts off, the Vampire Queen limply being pulled along with it.

The image of her friend on her bed, charred and on the brink of death, inserts itself into Bonnibel's mind, shaking her out of her shocked stupor. She looks over her shoulder to see four banana guards cowering behind a rock. "Guards! Capture her immediately!" she demands. All of her guards look to her nervously. "But don't hurt her!"

One banana guard leans his head on his hand, his brow furrowed as another guard tries to urge him to remain silent. "Any other basically impossible requests?"

Anger quickly rising in her system, the princess leans over the rock with a maniacal gleam in her eye, staring right into the face of the insubordinate soldier. "You're very existence seems impossible—almost a miracle, really!"

She doesn't even need to continue beyond this, as the guard immediately turns around to his allies with wide, scared eyes. "All right, dudes. Can't be ripe forever!"

"We can't?" one asks, while another nods to him. He takes a breath. "Right."

The four guards rush at Marceline, spears in hand as they shout in an attempt to muster their courage. Once they get close, though, their weapons are ripped from their grasp and hover around the Vampire Queen's unconscious form for a moment, before being magnetically propelled towards them.

"Really?!" Bonnibel exclaims, before analyzing the situation. "It seems Marceline is generating some kind of force… pulling objects towards her."

"Or is she pushing them away?" Peppermint Butler asks.

The princess glances down at him. "She can't seem to decide." In the corner of her vision, she sees her cannon-like device, with the clone of Cinnamon Bun—which she'd gotten permission from Flame Princess and Cinnamon Bun to make in order to determine if his newfound mental acuity was genetic—standing behind it, licking the orb at the end.

"Wait..." She glances between the cannon and her friend. "Cinnamon Bun! Point the orbital capsule at Marceline!"

"Orbittle capso?" CB asks, confused.

"Yes! The big round thing!"

"Oh!" The clone laughs to himself as he turns the capsule to face Marceline. "Haha, I was like 'what round thing?!' I'm such a ne'er-do-well!"

As soon as the orb is facing Marceline, the electrical energy surrounding her begins being pulled towards it, and she soon follows it, being wrenched from her path and speeding towards the orb at high velocity. She hits it and immediately slows as she is absorbed into its gelatinous surface, while her electrical energy begins running along the sphere's exterior.

Bonnibel rushes to the side of the cannon and watches her friend within the pink ball with great concern. A large group of candy people slowly gather around her, many looking on in confusion and fear. "The capsule is sparking!" Peppermint Butler informs the princess.

She watches as the surface of the orb begins rippling and Marceline shudders within. "It can't hold her long." Her emotions clouding her judgement, she nervously tries to come up with a solution for the issue that wouldn't mean sending her friend into orbit.

"Shoot it away!" a voice shouts from behind the princess.

"But isn't that Marceline?" another asks.

Electricity suddenly begin jumping from the orb much faster, running down the metallic frame of the launcher. A bolt arcs from the side and jumps into the ground mere inches from Peppermint Butler's foot. "We need to do something now!"

"I-I just need to think!" the princess cries, desperately trying to think of anything that she could do without harming her best friend. "I can't just— I need to—" She stops mid-stammer as she thinks she sees Marceline's eyes briefly flutter open for a short moment as she weakly presses her hand against the interior of the capsule. "I'm sorry Marceline, I—"

"Princess!"

She takes a breath to steady herself, then throws a fist up. "Fire!"

Peppermint Butler slams his fist into the large red button on the side of the machine, a bolt of electricity leaping into his arm in the process. Marceline blasts out from the end of its launcher, quickly breaching the clouds and taking on a spiraling tail as it disappears from sight.

Bonnibel watches on regretfully, the entire world fading from sight as she sees her closest friend and confidante disappear into the distance. She is momentarily unaware of the candy people all around her, each of them visibly upset by the situation as well.

"Princess…" Peppermint Butler begins, trying to comfort her.

She steps away, wanting only privacy. "Let me be."

Meanwhile, far above and a great distance away, Marceline shudders within her orb as the last of the electricity dissipates, gently discharging into the air without anything else to arc to.

The following morning, she tiredly opens her eyes only to see the dark abyss of space, tinted pink by the orbital capsule. She glances down and sees the planet below her before exhaustion once again overtakes her, slipping her back into unconsciousness as she leaves the last vestiges of the atmosphere behind.

Meanwhile, back in Ooo, Bonnibel sits atop a scaffold as workers beneath her haul away the remains of her short-lived astronomy lab. She wears a black sweatshirt, its hood pulled low over her face, and a pair of sunglasses to cover her eyes, which are bloodshot after a sleepness night plagued by guilt and regret, the image of the Vampire Queen looking through the capsule at her in the final moment before she was blasted not just out of the kingdom, but off the planet itself.

A couple of the workers walk past her, carrying one of the large instruments from the lab. "'Scuse me, Princess. Where d'ya want this contraption?"

"Put it into storage, please," she responds, her voice barely louder than a whisper.

"How 'bout 'dis faraway looky-thing?" another asks.

"Storage," she pauses to sigh, "...deep storage."

"Alright already!"

Bonnibel hears the sound of the nearby crane raising up. She sulkily stares into the distance for a few moments before she scooches towards the edge of the scaffold. "Princess…" Peppermint Butler begins, standing on a small wooden platform suspended on the crane's hook.

"How's everybody holding up down there?" she asks as she begins climbing from her perch.

The crane lowers to follow her. "The people's grief has taken a…" he purses his lips, "a somewhat disturbing shape."

"Yeah." Bubblegum drops onto the ground and walks into the city, her hands thrust deeply into her pockets "I bet it has."

Peppermint Butler watches as she walks off, standing in the same spot he had roughly 500 years prior, when the kingdom was first being established. A sudden sense of deja vu comes over him, and his mind momentarily goes blank…

 _"So," Marceline chuckled as she walked between the walls, which were then still being built, "the walls're made of cake, huh?"_

 _Bonnibel was walking behind her, giving the Vampire Queen a tour of the city. "Well, for the most part." She giggled. "An intruder would be hard-pressed to chew through the icing layers I'm formulating!"_

 _"Mmm, yes, I gotcha…" She turned around, grinning. "Well Bonnie, I'm impressed! You've really done a lot with the place."_

 _The princess chuckles bashfully, blushing slightly. "Heh heh… thanks! It's been a ton of work to—"_

 _"So, are you coming to the show tonight? It's my final gig at Slimy Brian's…"_

 _"Oh, I don't know. I can't really leave the new candies…"_

 _"Aw, c'mon, Bonnie." Marceline leaned against the wall, a small smile on her face. "Your lil' mutants can survive a few hours…"_

 _"Well…" Bonnibel sighed, "I'll try."_

 _Behind them, Peppermint Butler watched on, drooling slightly._

"Huh?" The candy butler blinks as he comes out of his trance and wipes away a bit of saliva that had dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.

By the time he came out of the daze, the princess has reached her palace and was entering storage. Several candy laborers huddle against the walls as she walks through the halls, not wanting to do anything to trigger her while she's in this emotionally-delicate state. She pushes open the door and looks at the things countless she'd decided to get rid of, putting them here because she either no longer had any use for them, or she was trying to hide them from the public eye. Several weapons were on the wall—swords, shields, pikes, a crossbow—as well as various impliments of torture, including an iron maiden with a model of her face on top, and a guillotine whose blade was replaced with a buzz saw.

She walks down the steps and glances around the room, paying little to no mind to the workers who were groaning and grumbling as they carefully lowering her equipment to the ground. Her eyes pass over more items in the room. A painting of Lemongrab she'd sent him when he first set up his city-state, only to have him immediately return it, is hung up on one wall. Nearby, on the other side of the corner, is mounted a juvenile dragon's skull—the skull of the last dragon (Neddy not included) in Ooo, which she'd personally had killed. At least, the last dragon they knew of; there could always be more.

The princess' eyes finally settle on a small pink bass amp sat against one wall, just below a few swords. She slowly makes her way over to it, regretful and nostalgic tears forming in her eyes as she remembered where it had come from.

 _"Bonnie! You made it!" Marceline exclaimed after her show, flying across the room towards the princess._

 _"...Yeah. I missed the opening act but—" Bonnibel stopped mid-sentence as she was quickly enveloped in a hug, something somewhat rare from the Vampire Queen. She quickly overcame her surprise and reciprocated the embrace, blushing slightly. While pulled close, she noticed the sweat on the rockstar's blue-grey skin, although the building wasn't particularly warm; she assumed that it was from the show, seeing how intense Marceline got at certain points._

 _"I saw you from the crowd," the half-demon said with a grin, breaking the hug, "and I was like… 'I'm going to annihilate this show, just for Bonnie!' But metaphorically, for a change."_

 _Bubblegum chuckled bashfully. She begans wringing a bit of her hair. "Well, you were great. I'm glad I engineered that good babysitter to watch that evil babysitter I engineered by mistake."_

 _"Cool, cool." Marceline glanced over PB's shoulder, noticing Slimy Brian talking to some fans near the door. "There's an after-party at Poison Gulch. We can hitch a ride with Slimy Brian."_

 _"Oh…" The princess' smile dropped slightly. "...I can't. I really have to get back."_

 _"For real? Already?" The Vampire Queen leaned back in the air, crossing her arms and cocking an eyebrow. Her face quickly softened, however. "Well, I'm glad you made it." Her expression became somewhat somber, and she glanced at the stage. "The room looks so dark from up there… you were the only one I could see."_

 _Bonnibel leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'd stay if I could—really, I want to go with you—but I can't be away for very long. Not while the candies are so… undeveloped."_

Bonnibel is torn out of her flashback by the sound of the workers. "Just there… yes!" one of them shouts, followed by the sound of her telescope dropping to the ground.

"Oh Lorb! Finally!" another cries. All three collapse to the ground, sweating and breathing heavily.

"Actually guys," she begins, turning to the exhausted workers, "I'm gonna need that upstairs." One of them sits up in disbelief, while the others groan in agony.

The following morning, she's in her lab, again looking through her telescope. Countless papers covered in notes and thick scientific books full of bookmarks, along with various mathematical and engineering implements, are scattered across the table to one side, with spare papers and a clear glass helmet on the opposing table.

Peppermint Butler enters the room, finding her as he had so often for the prior days. "Here's that research material, Princess. Do you need anything else?"

"That'll be all," she responds as she adjusts the eyepiece. "Thanks."

"So… back to observing the leaflans?" PepBut asks nervously, wringing his hands.

"Not quite." Bonnibel moves telescope over another message, reading 'Princess Bubblegum is Princess Bubbledumb'. "Though I'm happy to see that they're still thinking about me."

"I don't understand."

"Our technology is lacking. I'm going to need their help."

"Th-the leaflans?!"

The princess looks to her butler with a large grin. "I can flex some of my famous foreign diplomacy!" She rises from her seat. "Better bring a really excellent gift…"

"I'm soooo confused, Princess!"

Bubblegum sits at her cleaner table and looks sadly at a picture of her friend on her table, which she'd taken a few years prior while she was managing the Scream Queens. "I sent her away, Peppermint Butler. It wasn't right."

"Marceline?" Peppermint Butler asks. The princess nods, then begins tracing her finger along the surface of her helmet. "You did what needed to be done! In the heat of the moment, you fulfilled your responsibility to the candy people."

Lifting the helmet from the table, she determinedly says, "My job is not yet done. I'm going to find her."

"You mean… up in space?" The princess grunts affirmably as she rises and moves to a suit rack on the other side of the room. "What'll you do if you find her…?"

"Bring her home." She picks up the arm of a spacesuit she'd made a few years prior, although she never expected to use it. "I'll need something tougher than a tiny space pod, of course."

"The ability to live no matter what?"

"Haha, no," she laughs, sliding her arm into the suit piece. "A space suit!" Leaning down and putting a hand on her butler's head, she adds, "You've helped me build a great big world, Peppermint Butler. It seemed almost impossible in the beginning." She glances up at the starry night sky. "Sometimes I forget how small it used to be. How small it still is."

Meanwhile, floating between large chunks of space rock orbiting the Earth, Marceline's pod is brought to a dead stop with a shake. The Vampire Queen opens her eyes as the light on her, which was diminished enough by the semi-opaque capsule as to not cause her much harm, turns to shadow. She sees a large lasso-like thing made from leaves and vines wrapping around her capsule and pulling it towards one of the asteroids. She tiredly watches as she is slowly brought down towards the grey rocky surface, her eyelids once more growing heavy in spite of what was happening. Before she even reaches the asteroid, she passes out again, slumping against the inside wall of the capsule.

 _"It's a really great business opportunity for you," Suspencer, a sniveling vegetoid wannabe talent manager for his self-run label, said in his nasally voice. "I'm getting a variety of talent in on the ground floor. Day one. Folks are gonna be clawing for a spot on this label." Marceline, cleary disinterested, filed her nails while reclining in her chair. "We handle all the event booking and promotion, obviously. All for a nominal cut—no more noticeable than white noise!"_

 _Marceline sat up and turned away from him, making Suspencer nervous. "Uh, we can also handle your interviews and—"_

 _The Vampire Queen begins walking away, looking for something to drink. "People already show up to my concerts. I'm not worried about it."_

 _"B-but audiences are fickle, Marceline!" Suspencer cried, rushing after her. "You really think you can count on their loyalty?"_

 _"Did you germinate onto the scene yesterday, dude?" Marceline asked, annoyed, as she picked up a red plastic cup and sank her fangs into it. "These people are my friends. They'd follow me to the ends of the galaxy."_

 _Suspenser exasperatedly groaned. "Do you really believe that? Or is it just something you tell yourself?"_

 _In an instant, Marceline whirled around and whipped the un-red cup at the vegetoid, who brought his clipboard up with a cry just in time to protect his face. "You sniveling little hanger-on! Shove your record label through your boneless skull!" The Vampire Queen marched out of the Poison Gulch nightclub, all of the patrons completely silent and watching after her in surprise, although a few glared at Suspencer._

 _"Well, don't come crying to me when you're alone and forgotten!" Suspencer shouts after her. "Then we'll see if your so-called talent keeps you warm!"_

 _"She can't hear you, dude," one of the people sat at the nearest table said, leaning back in his chair._

Marceline suddenly awakens from her dream, finding herself on a stone slab roughly carved to resemble a bed. She bolts upright, looking around at the room she's in. The walls and floors are blank grey stone, save for the glowing gems imbedded in the rock. In the corner of the room, the torn remains of the capsule are discarded, only a small portion remaining. A staircase in one wall leads up, out of her chamber. "Hello? Is someone there?" she asked, putting her foot on the first step.

She finds no response, and curiously, she can't even hear her own voice, either. "I'm really tired and I promise not to hurt you!" she calls out, climbing up the staircase. As she gets to the top of the staircase, she arrives in the bottom of a small canyon. She notices a strange sensation, almost like voices being turned into energy, radiating from the top of the opposing wall. "Something's up there…"

Leaning forward, the Vampire Queen tries to levitate, only to fall on her face with a grunt. "Float body! Float!" she yells, before peelings herself from the ground and rubbing her cheek, in spite of the pain and scratches immediately fading away "I must be severely un-red."

With a sigh, she begins climbing up the canyon wall. "The indignity of other people's problems!"

As she scales the wall, she tries to remember how she got there. "Think, Marcy… what the blood happened?" Blue flashes in her mind. "...blue…?" She pulls herself onto a new ridge and sees her arms covered in blue energy. "Sparks? Electricity?" Marceline swallows hard as she remembers being rendered comatose within the last year by lightning. "An unchill scenario?"

Continuing her climb, she has a brief image of her pouring out a soda bottle onto her music journal. "Did I run away…? Was I drawn to this place?" She sees Bonnibel standing in front of her, clearly distraught as she feebly pounds on the interior of the capsule. "Or was I…?"

Sudden realization dawns on her, as she realizes what had happened. "Bonnie…" she sneers. "THAT—"

Back on Earth, Bonnibel is crouched next to a shuttle, a tool belt around her waist and a toolbox at her side, various instruments scattered around her on the floor. "It's ready." She takes a breath, looking at her ship tiredly. "The ship is ready. There's nothing left to do."

"I know it is…" Peppermint Butler groans, wiping his sugary sweat from his brow. "I've been tightening and untightening the same bolt for an hour…"

"Oh Peppermint Butler…" The princess kneels next to him and puts a hand atop his head. "I need you to endure. You're my only partner. The candy people can no nothing of this mission."

PepBut sighs. "I know…"

"Besides," Bubblegum smiles, "I'll need your killer sense of humor when I'm up there." Peppermint Butler exasperatedly laughs, the force behind it visible on his face.

She returns to the shuttle, running through all of her maintenance checks multiple times before she moves it to the launch station. By the time she's finally entered the ship, night has fallen. "Pink Marble to Mint Base," Bonnibel says into her mic, running through the pre-flight protocol, "confirming we are ready for takeoff."

"Mint Base to Pink Marble," Peppermint Butler responds, flipping switches and hitting buttons on his control board, "taffy thrust is go. Syrup fuel cells are activated. We are good to launch."

Inside the rocket, the princess deactivates her mic as she adjusts herself inside the suit as she feels the ship rumble while the fuel ignites. "I wonder if I'm an impulsive person?" After a few moments, the ship begins lifting off the grounds as the flames begin blasting out from the massive thrusters.

As their fuel depletes, she hears Peppermint Butler once more in her ear while she clutches at her safety belts. "Booster rockets disengaging." The shuttle shakes as the strapped-on rockets are discarded, dropping off leaving only the central sustainer rocket and the shuttle.

Once they exit Earth's atmosphere, she breaths a sigh of relief and looks out the window at the broken planet. "A calm descends," she mumbles to herself, "but this is the scariest part."

On the asteroid, Marceline wanders across the grey rock, alone save for her own thoughts and the nagging sensation of which she's been trying to find the source for the past several hours. She stands at the edge of a cliff, staring out over the near-featureless landscape.

"Neither lost nor found… a vague whirlwind of hope and worry. A new and terrifying loneliness." With an inaudible, breathless sigh, she sits down and leans against a rock, her emotions as bleak as the land around her. "Stranded between the wonders of discovery… and a fear that no one else will ever see it."

She suddenly notices the sensation is stronger than ever, and a blue light is gently washing over the edge of the rocks she's sat against. Marceline rises to her feet and peers over the rocks, and her the sight that greets her eyes is one she never expected to see: a gathering of small dog- or wolf-like humanoids hanging around, with one of them—an older, grey-haired one with a scar along one eye—is sat lounging in a pool of glowing, bubbly blue-green liquid.

Although its mouth doesn't move in any way that would denote speech, instead curling into a calm smile, she clearly hears its voice in her head. "Well, well, well~," it says, clearly humored, "Look who's awake."

Marceline silently screams in a combination of shock and revulsion.


	8. Along Tides of Light

_Marceline walked through the streets of the still-under-construction Candy Kingdom, her hands in her jacket's pockets and her mouthshut, curved downwards into a frown. Several construction workers dot the streets, putting up walls and buildings. Her mind races as she wonders how best she can break the news to PB. Not paying much attention to her path, she accidentally bumps into one worker. "'Ey!" he grunts._

" _Sorry, bud," she quietly apologizes, then sees the princess behind him, welding a piece of electrical equipment to the wall. With a sigh, she walks towards her._

 _As Bonnibel notices her presence and raises her welding mask, Marceline softly says, "Well, I'm out."_

 _The princess' heart drops as she immediately realizes what the Vampire Queen is talking about; she promised a close friend of several centuries—someone she's known longer than Bubblegum—that she'd move into their apartment building and help them start up a band. "Y-your residency in the Primordial Filth Kingdom? It's today?"_

" _Yeah." Marceline averts her gaze, trying her hardest to keep her emotions in check. "For six months."_

" _Oh…" Bonnibel stands up sadly, then puts on a nervous smile. "Well, I'll practically be done with all this when you're back. We can hang out in my cool new kingdom."_

 _She leaned forward and embraced Marceline, who halfheartedly returned the gesture and responded, "Yeah. We'll hang."_

Bubblegum wakes up to the sound of an alarm blaring. With a yawn, she checks the monitor: the coolant valve is jammed. "Already?"

She quickly puts on her spacesuit and enters the airlock, sealing the door behind her as she exits the ship. Bright, unadulterated sunlight shines onto her face, sweat instantly rising on her face where it hits, while the flesh in the shadows is cold, even breaking out into occasional goosebumps. With one hand held firmly onto her anchor rope, she moves to the maintenance hatch and pulls it open, then grabs out her tools one at a time, making sure that none of them float away as she begins repairing the coolant systems. "These parts are so finicky… huh?"

About four hundred meters from her current position, she notices an abnormal cluster of space rocks. She quickly repairs the coolant system and climbs back into her ship, then pilots it towards the strange collection of asteroids. She soon notices a pair of leaflans moving them, and immediately assumes they're writing out another insult for her.

Once more disembarking her ship, she spacewalks out to the leaflans, hearing a bit of their conversation.

"Sick," one, a lighter-colored one says. "Very sick."

"Our most cutting yet?" the second, this one darker than the first, responds.

"Princess Chlorophyll will be pleased."

"And Bubblegum's gonna eat _stars_!"

The lighter one laughs. "I can already see her dumb face." They pose dramatically while doing a very poor imitation of a vaguely-female voice. "It's true… I _am_ so bad!"

"Ha ha, owned."

Bonnibel stops just behind the lighter one, who remains unaware of her presence and continues his mockery. The other one, however, sees her, their face going blank with fear. "Why oh why am I so inferior to the leaflan, despite dedicating my entire idiotic life to 'science'?" He notices his friend's look of shock. "What, is she behind me?"

He smirks and turns around, his eyes shut for the purpose of his joke. "Welcome to space, O' mighty Princess Bubblegum of the dirt crawling—" The lighter leaflan opens his eyes to see the princess floating in front of him, then starts to scream for a brief moment before suddenly exploding, mushy green bits splattering everywhere.

Both figures bring their arms up to protect them, then Bonnibel stares with wide, shocked eyes.

"Sorry, princess," the darker leaflan apologizes, scratching the back of his leafy body. "The scenario was just too unlikely for him."

"How 'bout that," she responds, wiping some of the leaflan remains from her suit.

"Yeah. Makes you think." With a sigh, the dark green leaflan turns and begins floating away. "Sorry about the mess."

Bonnibel raises a hand towards him, "Actually, can you take me to see Prince Chlorophyll? I have something important to discuss." She shrugs and puts on a comedic grin. "I figure that's worth a laundry cycle or two."

Marceline stares off into space, the vast array of starts far greater than what she could see on Earth, even though she lives in a place with little to no light pollution. For a brief moment, she thinks she sees a slight glimmer of pink, and an array of conflicted emotions rise up in her. "Come, Marceline," Ambassador Marro, the wolf-like figure orders, redirecting her attention. "It's best not to stare at the end."

The two walk across the asteroid, the Vampire Queen getting used to telepathic communication as he directs her towards their main settlement. "At first glance our world may seem barren, " he says as they walk through the village's entrance, "but we have much to offer." They walk through a marketplace, various stalls set up and selling many wares, some leaf-based, others made from a glowing goo, and more simply seeming to be made from normal materials. "Our people have built a comfortable life in just a few generations."

"What's up with all the leaves?" Marceline asks, noticing that almost all of the textiles and fabrics are replaced by leaves and repurposed foliage.

"Oh yes the leaflan are… galactic allies, of sorts. They provide us with every organic comfort…" he grabs a jar of glowing liquid, "in exchange for this!"

"Right… my next question."

The small wolf-man returns the jar to its vender and resumes walking. "Glo is harvested from the rocks, which capture energy and light from the stars."

Marceline marvels at the many different colors of glo around, some held in jars, others being molded by lupine people, and she notices some of it even rising from the land itself and freely floating around. "It's so beautiful! We have nothing like this at home."

"It's the very essence of our being! We live by its nurturing, rejuvenating properties."

Back in the shuttle, Bonnibel activates her suit's mic and detaches the sustainer rocket, leaving just her shuttle to go on. "Disengaged," she says, although she is unsure if Peppermint Butler is even at the controls anymore. She closes her eyes and takes a breath, then quickly begins tapping buttons and flipping switches, making sure the shuttle is optimally functioning as she heads towards her next destination.

"I understand, Ambassador Marro," Marceline calmly states after hearing the end of the small lupine figure's tour. "I feel it, too." Her eyes lock on an acoustic guitar nestled alongside various broken bits of instruments, another wolf-like person manning the stand. " _Yo_. Is that what I think it is?" she asks, getting closer. After seeing it can still play, she picks it up with a smile. She glances at the person tending the stall. "Can I borrow this? I promise I'll do something cool with it."

The small wolfman shrugs. "You're hotter than me, so yes."

With a smile, Marceline strums the strings, but frowns as no sound comes out. "Right… no air, no sound."

"Sorry, my friend," Ambassador Marro says.

"S'alright. Just got excited for a moment." With a sigh, she slings the guitar onto her back.

"I understand. We tuffbone pine for rarity as well." They continue walking. "Out planet and our people are nomadic by nature. A powerful magnetic force keeps us blissfully on the move. But recently the magnetic force has dissipated. We don't know where it's gone."

"Magnetic force…" Marceline mumbles, thinking back to her vision of getting shocked some time before Bonnibel sent her into space, as well as the three days she spent in a lightning-induced coma.

Marro decides to redirect the conversation. "But this is not your concern. There is much for you to see!"

The glo continues to grow along the land around her, creating bright, multicolored blotches on the grey dusty surface. She feels a slight breeze rustle her hair, an updraft coming from the glowing substance.

Walking into the Leaflan's palace, Bonnibel is taken through hallways of dull metal, whose color changes from a faded purple to a greyed red, a desaturated blue to a dull green, and everywhere in between. There are lights in the ground and walls, which seem to be multicolored goo within a glass capsule. Her suit detects slight oxygen emissions from them.

As she enters the throne room, she sees the Leaflan she had briefly imprisoned sat on his throne with a 2x2 Rubik's cube. "Prince Chlorophyll," one of the leaflans within the room begins, "the Princess Bubblegum." The prince tosses his cube over his shoulder and looks at Bubblegum with interest.

Stepping forward, Bonnibel says, "Your Majesty, I come to you in the midst of an urgent mission."

"Oh yeah?" Chlorophyll responds, posing flamboyantly on his throne. "Tell me, how old do you think I am?"

This takes Bubblegum by surprise. "...Excuse me?" She notices the various leaflans around the room nervously glancing between themselves. "Um… fif… teen?" A piercing silence as all eyes turn to her. "Thirteen?" she continues guessing. "Twelve? Nine?"

"Guards! Vaporize her!" the Leaflan orders.

"Please, highness!" one of the servants pleads. "The princess is standing so far away, my lord! She can barely see your glorious facial hair! Remember, our friends in Ooo lack the acutely precise vision that all leaflan are gifted from birth!" He glances at Bonnibel with a certain look in his eye. "But you see it _now_ , don't you, Princess?"

"Yes!" she cries. "And what a difference it makes!"

Prince Chlorophyll begins stroking his moustache as his servant breathes a sigh of relief. "Hmm, yes. It does complement my features nicely. Now… what do you want?"

"I need two skilled navigators. Your know-how of space is essential to my quest."

"Princess," the Leaflan sighs, "surely you know how _bored_ the leaflan are by your primitive notions of... 'space exploration'? The infinite black is but a playground to us. As intrinsic as life itself."

"Yes… but this isn't just _any_ mission. It's," she pauses and smirks, "an emotionally wrought one!"

All around the room, everyone gasps and begins clamoring. "Do tell us!" "Oh please lay it on us!"

"...And no leaflan can resist a good bit of gossip!"

"Is it a mission of _love_?" the prince inquires.

"It is…" she sighs and looks down, "a quest for forgiveness."

" _Maybe… this is good," Bonnibel proposed as Marceline faced away from her, standing in the shadows created by the partially-completed walls._

" _What's good?"_

" _That… y'know. That you get to do this thing you wanna do! And you're not just waiting around for… like…"_

" _For you?" Marceline spat, far harsher than she intended it to come out._

 _Bonnibel glowered and lowered her mask back over her face, returning to her work. "Have a good trip, Marceline."_

 _The Vampire Queen lingered for a few moments more, then walked off, kicking herself for being so rude in the last time she'll see Bubblegum for almost half a year._

 _Behind her, she heard Bonnibel give one final address. "Hope you find what you need."_

The next day, wearing a new dress woven from leaves, Marceline sits sadly on a ridge, remembering that last time she and PB had fallen out, it started from them being separated on bad terms as well, and that things are far worse this time around. She tries to convince herself to forgive her friend, but even in her desperation not to lose her best friend again, she fails to find the resolve to do so.

"Marceline!" one of the tuffbone calls. "The globath is ready!"

She drops to the ground and heads toward the bubbling pool of glo. A soft breeze runs from it, and air fills her lungs; a welcome sensation, after having been in vacuum since she woke up on the stone bed. One bubble rises up and pops in front of her face, startling her enough that she drops the guitar into the glo.

It hits, sinking midway into the surface and causing the color to change from a semi-dark teal, radiating out in rings of magenta, yellow, and various other colors. It rotates in the liquid, glowing slightly as it becomes saturated by the liquid. She lifts it up and steps into the glo, and is surprised to find that it isn't wet; strangely enough, the feeling reminds her of the slime she would play with as a kid, before the Mushroom War.

She glances nervously around, seeing all the tuffbones' eyes are on her, then begins playing the guitar The globath begins changing color once more, rings of bright color radiating out from her as she plays. Because of the gasses released by the pool, she can actually hear herself play. A smile arises on her face, and the glo even begins rising around her body, like a slow-motion wave. By the time she's finished, the edges of the pool are cresting in large, multicolored waves of glowing liquid. She stares in awe, the kaleidoscopic light shining down on her from all directions.

With a smile, she moves onto another song, and as the pool continues to slowly, almost hypnotically dance to her music, the air begins to fill with small electrical sparks.

"Where did she come from, Ambassador?" one Tuffbone asks Marro.

"She is like us, young one. A creature of the stars. Home is everywhere the soul takes her. Everywhere and nowhere."

As this occurs, Bonnibel is in talks with the Leaflan. "It should be a simple transaction," the prince said, stroking his moustache as Bubblegum watched his transmission on her monitor.

"And this… 'glo'... you're sure it's easy to find where we're going?"

"Uh, _yeah_. We leaflan know this kinda thing innately. Your friend is sitting on a pile of it as we speak." He smirks. "And that's why we're the keepers of nice things. I plan to put this new batch by my bedside."

"And what if I tail to find you any?"

A cold smile rises on Prince Chlorophyll's face. "Then I guess you won't be saving your friend, will you?"

Bonnibel's eyes widen, then she nervously leans forward, resting her head on one hand. A brief moment of silence passes, only to be broken by the leaflan within her shuttle.

"See the Leafs game last night?" one asks.

The other responds, "Yeah, man. Real barn-burner."

Back on the tuffbone asteroid, Marceline writes lyrics on a leaf as she sits in the center of a network of wires, connecting her glo-saturated acoustic guitar to several globs of the semi-gelatinous substance. She begins playing, watching as blue electricity visible runs along the cables, jumping from one glo blob to the next.

"Truly incredible," Marro exclaims.

"I can't believe it, grandpa," his granddaughter, Brisket, gasps as he empties a sparking capsule made from a bone into the glo tank on her back. "The Spark that will elevate our world."

The Vampire Queen stands up, checking over her lyrics as she walks over to the two tuffbones. "Yo Marcy, wanna touch it?" Brisket asks, holding her jar up.

She chuckles, not wanting to get near the electricity; when she's the one controlling it, that's one thing, but she's had some bad recent electrical mishaps. "Eh heh, I'm good! I can see it from here."

"Please excuse my granddaughter, Marceline," Marro sighs. "It is rare that we see the Spark these days."

The half-demon puts her guitar on her back and begins walking back towards the tuffbone village. "So this energy force can move the island through space?"

"Yes. Would'd've thought a visitor from another world could provide it. And if you'll let us use it…"

"For sure, Ambassador Marro! I'm just happy to be inspired."

Brisket looks to Marceline with admiration. "Your inspiration, as you call it, is our first step to cosmic utopia. With the Spark, we can travel halfway across the galaxy. To true leaflan independence!"

"That's enough!" Marro interrupts. "The leaflan are our generous and handsome friends. We do not speak ill of them."

"Handsome, eh?" Marceline jokes; she knows full-well what they look like.

"Supposedly, the leaflan can hear our thoughts through space," Marro's granddaughter think-whispers. "It's common tuffbone superstition. Since the dawn of our world, we've paid tribute to the ancient King Kale. He provided us with many comforts, in exchange for our natural resources." She sighs. "But as generations have gone by, our wealth has depleted. We long for a life and an ecosystem of our own. Your music gives us the hope that, at long last, we can break away." Marceline nervously holds her guitar's strap, feeling pity for the tuffbones and wanting to do all she can to help them.

After a quick break, they return to the Spark setup, but the Vampire Queen is still somewhat despondent as Brisket attaches the wires to her guitar.

"Is something wrong, my friend?" Marro asks.

Marceline sighs, crossing her arms. "I want to help, it's just… I can't guarantee how long I'll have the Spark. I've lost it before."

"I suppose that's true." Marro puts a hand on her arm. "But we are a community. No task is your burden alone. If you're one of us, we will support you."

They notice Brisket staring at something in the sky, and as they turn to look, they see two lights lowering down; one pink and one green.

Far above, at the source of the lights, Bonnibel looks down at the asteroid, unable to make out any specific details or figures. "Can this be it…?" she asks.

One of the leaflans scoffs at her question. "We're seldom wrong."

"On this barren world… can she really be here?"

"Stay close," Marro orders as the lights draw steadily closer, Marceline and the tuffbones all hiding behind a small ridge. "We don't know who they are. Could be space scavengers or pirates…"

Marceline stands up and squints at the light. "That… pink…" As it gets closer, she begins to see the lights take on more humanoid shapes, and she suddenly realizes who's coming down.

She stands up, although Marro calls after her. "Wait!"

As she watches, Bonnibel drops from the sky, their eyes meeting as she slowly descends. The princess lands a few feet from the Vampire Queen, both unsure what to do. Marceline remains silent, so Bubblegum begins speaking first.

"Marceline, I'm, uh—" she looks away nervously, her friend visible conflicted. Tapping her helmet, she nervously lets out a psychic chuckle. "I'm still getting used to this telepathy thing!" She takes a breath to focus herself, then offers her hand. "I'm here to bring you home."

The Vampire Queen stares at her for a moment, then whips around and marches off without a word.

"Wait! Marcy, if you'd just—" Several tuffbones begin climbing over the ridge to bring Marceline back in with them, and Bonnibel misinterprets this as them about to attack. "Look out!" she cries, whipping one arm up and firing a wrist laser at one, hitting it between the eyes and causing it to cry out in pain.

"Hey!" Marceline shouts. "Everyone's just a hostile to you, eh? Fire and ask questions later?"

"I thought—"

The Vampire Queen marches up to Bonnibel, fury written across her face. "Guess what, space babe? What you think isn't the law here. These guys _welcomes_ me. We're here for each other." She turns and crosses her arms with a grunt. "But I guess I understand you better than ever, Bonnie." Walking into the tuffbones, she adds, "I won't be going home."

She sits on a rock, facing away from Bonnibel with a look more of anguish than anger. The princess stares after her, looking visibly hurt and unsure of how to react.

Suddenly, Brisket shouts, "Get away! They've got—"

A net shoots out, catching both her and Marceline in it before she can finish. Bonnibel whirls around to see one of the leaflans holding the net gun, quickly sliding another capsule in. "Leaflan! You—"

She gets shot as well, thrown back and landing beside the two other restrained figures.

"Boy, thanks for hte warm welcome, folks!" the leaflan laughs as he stands over them. "Just makin' a quick pit stop. That's some nice Spark you got, pup! We'll take it to go!" They snatch it from Brisket's paws.

"No!" she cries. Marceline begins tearing away at the net, using claws and fangs to rip herself free as Bonnibel tries to line up a shot with her wrist laser on the betrayers.

"Keep thinking good thoughts about us, honeysucklers!"

With that, the leaflans climb into the princess' ship as the Vampire Queen gets to her feet, then they blast off, the flames blasting the ground and threatening to throw her back again. Both women watch as the ship flies off, wobbling as the leaflans struggle to pilot it; Bonnibel looks on in shock, while Marceline does so in anger. She turns and stomps off as the princess, staring in disbelief, takes a seat on the ground.

Four hours later, Marceline is back to generating Spark. In a small cave, the tuffbones are setting up glo and wiring them together as the Vampire Queen tries to play, but can't keep playing for longer than a few moments before falling prey to self-doubt.

Bonnibel walks in to find her slumped over her guitar, sighing. "So, uh… rewiring my laser cannon as a transmitter didn't work, but it weirdly functions as a guitar tuner, if you… want to… uh…" Marceline turns away, not wanting to even look at her. "Can't you _try_ to let me help? Could you even just pretend?!"

"I'm not down with pretending we're cool," Marceline jeers, the turmoil between her and Bonnibel of the past few months finally taking form. "That's _your_ scene."

The princess tries to keep her emotions in check; she doesn't want to make this any worse. "I forgive you for wrecking my lab, y'know! With your sparkly, glowy, whatever!" She glares after the Vampire Queen as she leaves the cave, but her grimace turns to a simple regretful look of longing.

Brisket comes up behind Marceline. "Things are weird with you and the princess, huh?"

"Since the beginning of time."

"I see…"

Changing the subject, Marceline asks, "How's the glo reading, Brisket?"

"Well… not great. We need at least half a jar of glo to make out migration." She perks up. "But we'll keep going, eh? I'm sure your inspo will kick in eventually."

"Yeah…" Marceline sighs, sitting on a rock and burying her face in her hands. "I told Marro this would happen. I knew I'd let you all down."

"How, exactly?" Marro asks, walking over to the two.

"By seeming like this limitless source of creative energy!" She turns away and pulls her knees to her chest. "And now you really need me… and the well's run dry."

"Listen, Marceline." The tuffbone ambassador takes a seat. "Shortly before you arrived, we used out last bit of Spark to send out a distress call. We expected nothing… but the galaxy sent you!" He takes her hands in his paws. "We are no worse off than before, but we found a friend in you. What a rare thing that is."

Marceline looks down into the faces of the tuffbones in front of her, smiling softly as Bonnibel watches on, full of remorse. Raising her guitar, the Vampire Queen begins a new song, the tuffbones taking hands and swaying along with the tune.

" _Life is lonely, but unlikely too, so take my hand and we'll be fine."_ The glo begins pulsating and glowing brighter. " _Together see the world anew, and watch the stars align."_ A blue glow rises from the crowd as Spark begins climbing up the tuffbones' fur. " _Lonely but unlikely…"_

The wolf-like creatures join in singing. " _Yeah, yeah yeah!"_

Suddenly getting an idea, Bonnibel interrupts, suggesting, "Let's repair the capsule!"

"Woah, woah woah."

"Capsule…?" Marceline asks.

"The one I—" the princess pauses to rephrase. "That Marceline arrived in. Do you still have the pieces?"

One of the tuffbones steps forward, wearing a pink suit made from scraps of the capsule. "We, uh… didn't know they were useful. Do they need it back?"

"Tell you what. You can keep the shorts."

"Good!" The tuffbone smiles. "You don't want them!"

"Excuse me?!" Marceline stands up, leaving her guitar on the ground. "You think that just because you have an actual way back I'm just going to change my mind? I said I'm not going back, and I'm a woman of my word."

Hearing this, Bonnibel looks visibly hurt, and the Vampire Queen's resolve almost breaks. "Please, Marcy. I didn't want—"

"I'm tired of your excuses, Bonnie. I'm not heading back."

"Why are you acting like this?" the princess cries, her eyes growing wet.

"Well, why'd you send me into space?!" Marceline snaps back, turning away so she won't see PB's tears.

Bubblegum puts a hand on her friend's shoulder, only to have it pushed off. "Please, I didn't want to do this. But something was happening with you, and I panicked. All the candy people were right there and I didn't want them to get hurt and—"

"I get it. You decided that it would be easier to send your best friend into space than to actually find out what was happening." Marceline shakes her head. "You haven't changed one bit. I told myself that you were a better person, but you really aren't." She marches off, leaving a trail of heavy prints in the grey dust.

"Marceline! Please!" Bonnibel calls after her, tears rolling down her cheeks. "I'm sorry! I…"

All of the tuffbones watch as she goes down the cliff face, her head soon dropping beneath the ridge. The princess stands still, hanging her head as her tears drop from her face. After a brief moment, she girds herself and sets off after her friend, following her prints.

The tracks lead to a dead end at the bottom of the slope, and she assumes Marceline had flown past this point. Bubblegum glances around, tears still in her eyes, then sighs and slowly heads back up to the cave.

Perched invisibly, Marceline watches her from a ledge midway up the rock face. Her emotions in conflict, she pushes off and flies off, a few rebellious tears rising in her eyes and dropping off. She can't stay away for long, though, heading to the village after a few hours. Even still, although she stays with the tuffbones, she can't bear to face Bonnibel after what she said, actively avoiding her and any potential confrontation. The closest to actual communication is them occasionally using some tuffbones—usually Brisket and Marro—as middlemen between them. These rarely go anywhere, however.

This goes on for several days before any progress is made between the two. On the ninth day, though, Bonnibel actually considers letting her stay on the asteroid with the tuffbones. As soon as the thought appears in her mind, however, she quells it and scolds herself, being careful not to project herself to those around her. She absently strolls across the asteroid and finds herself at the globath, still full of liquid. Marceline is sat at its edge, and even from a fair distance, she can see she's sobbing.

She carefully approaches her friend, almost like confronting a dangerous creature. The UI on her suit notifies her that there is a certain radius around the globath which has enough oxygen emitted by the glo to be able to safely breathe, for a time. "Marcy?"

The Vampire Queen doesn't look at her. "Go away, Bonnie."

"Please, I don't want to fight any more, and I don't think you want to either."

"Well, you should've thought of that before you shot me into space."

"I already told you: I panicked. I don't think you care, but I'm sorry—I really am. That's why I came to bring you back." She reaches her friend and gently places a hand on her shoulder. The Vampire Queen, grunts and stands up, floating across the pool of glo to put distance between them.

"What are you acting like this Marcy?" Bonnibel pleads, desperately running around the pool's edge to reach her. "I don't want us to be like this. Not again. Please, just come back. We can put this all behind us, and go back to how it was."

Once she gets too close, Marceline floats away again. "I can't come back, Bonnie. I really—" She harshly sighs. "Listen, I just _can't_."

Tears begin to rise in Bonnibel's eyes. "What's your problem?! Is it me? If it is, at least tell me!" Marceline doesn't respond. "Just tell me what I can do to make it up to you!" She takes off her helmet with a hiss as her suit depressurizes. "Please! I'll do whatever you want!"

" _You_ can't do anything," Marceline replies, gritting her teeth in an attempt to avoid tearing up herself. "Besides," she quietly adds, "you aren't the problem."

This throws Bonnibel for a loop. "What?!" She tries to catch up with the Vampire Queen again, following her around the edge of the pool, but every time she closes the distance, she floats out of reach again. "Why are you avoiding me? We're supposed to be best friends!"

"I can't talk about it. Not to you."

"Why not?!" She stares at Marceline across the pool, her pace becoming a slow trudge. "At least look at me!"

Again, she doesn't do anything. Bubblegum closes the distance, Marcline not even trying to stay away anymore, and grabs her hand. "Just tell me what's—"

She gets cut off as Marceline whirls around and clasps her hands behind her head, then pulls her close and plants a deep kiss on her mouth. Bonnibel, paralyzed by surprise, doesn't react until after they've already separated.

"That's why," she says before turning invisible once more.

After a moment, Bonnibel slowly comes to terms with what had just happened. She drops to her knees and touches the tips of her fingers to her lips, shocked. She looks around with wide eyes, then laughs and wipes away the tears from her eyes. "It all makes sense now."


	9. New Beginnings

Rising to her feet, Bonnibel's tears and laughter both continue, her shock and despair giving way to relief, but also fear. She wipes away her tears once more and replaces her helmet on her head, making sure that the suit seals properly. The princess takes breaths to still her beating heart, but she has difficulty calming down. Her helmet's UI blinks to life and confirms her suit's safe status, and although she is barely any calmer than before, she decides to return to the small cave where the pod was being repaired.

As she walks across the grey dust, her mind replays the kiss over and over again. With every repeat, though, new questions arise in her mind. Is Marceline really in love with her? Why didn't she say anything about it sooner? Was she afraid? What is she afraid of? Did she think it would end like the last time? Were they even ready for a second chance being together?

As she reaches the top of the hill, she finds Marceline alongside several tuffbones, working diligently to repair the orbital capsule. She takes a few steps in their direction and considers saying something to the Vampire Queen, but her nerve breaks before she can, bringing her to a stop as she silently watches the work continue.

Marceline, after a moment, feels her eyes on her back and glances over her shoulder. Their eyes meet for a moment, before both bashfully avert their gazes, blushing slightly.

By the next day, the capsule is nearly complete. "Well, it's no Banana Man's rocket," Bonnibel comments, "but it'll get us in the right direction.

"The main thing will be shielding it for reentry," one of the tuffbone engineers says. The capsule had been designed for bringing things—primarily explosives, to be used on the leaflan asteroid insults—out of the atmosphere, not for bringing anything back in. And certainly not after being torn apart and practically glued back together again.

The princess, wearing a thin, leafy new tuffbone-made suit, leans over the table and looks at the schematics. "Right. What do you have?"

"Not much. I can throw in a few mints to prevent space breath."

She crosses her arms and walks up next to the capsule, looking over the cracks in its thin membranous exterior, which is reinforced by less than a millimeter of an iron-based alloy the tuffbones cobbled together. "This'll be dangerous…"

Marceline walks next to her friend and places a hand on the capsule's wall, wearing a thin spacesuit of her own, although without a helmet and far more aesthetically-based than the princess'. "We have to try, right?" she asks. "For your kingdom."

Bonnibel nods, then sits down and begins helping to reattach the pieces to the main body of the capsule. Marro and Brisket enter the cave, the former apologizing to PB. "Sorry for the trouble our distress signal caused, Princess. We didn't know how strong the magnetic force would be."

"No, it's actually really neat! We can follow its path straight back to Earth." She stands up and smiles at the tuffbones. "This was a pain in the butt, but that's the price of having neighbors, I guess." Bonnibel inspects the exterior, making sure she's covered as much as she can and that there isn't any more bits of capsule left to attach.

Meanwhile, Marro and Brisket walk just outside the cave, still in clear view of the orbital capsule, to find Marceline staring at Earth. When she notices them, she drops to her knees in order to get on their level. "Ambassador Marro… will we ever meet again?" she asks sadly.

"It's natural to drift apart, my friend. We've come and gone from places of supreme beauty. But sometimes, miraculously, we drift back together again." Marceline smiles and begins heading into the capsule alongside Bubblegum, as Marro finishes his comforting words. "Until then, we'll let time do its thing."

The two women wave at the tuffbones as their door rises up, then the princess presses a few buttons on the dashboard. After a moment, the exterior is covered in Spark, the pink fusing together to form a solid cover over the capsule. It rises from the ground, a bit unsteadily at first, before streaking off into the darkness of space, retracing the path Marceline took to arrive on the asteroid.

There is little communication between the two women; the princess occasionally gives updates as to their progress, but beyond that, they rarely speak, instead opting to look through the semi-opaque walls of the capsule.

After three hours, Marceline notices their velocity decreasing. "It's slow moving, now."

"We don't need to go far," Bonnibel explains. "Gravity should take over before long."

They wait in silence again, before the Vampire Queen sighs and crosses her arms, ready to get something off her chest. "Bonnie, I want to let all of this go. _All_ of it." The princess glances over at her. "...But, it's not easy. There's a fear."

"What are you afraid of?" she asks, somewhat nervously.

Marceline simply chuckles and leans against the wall. "Not much anymore." She sighs again. "But I remember the way you faded away from me, and how _that_ scared me." A scowl appears on her face as she remembers her falling-out with the princess centuries earlier. "And I can't reconcile that with my present self."

"I needed my own life."

"...Yeah."

"I never saw the danger. It's such a long life, I was sure there'd be time for us again." Bonnibel looks at the wall of the capsule, touching her hand to her reflection's. "But then you were gone, and time seemed finite again, and _I_ was afraid." She solemnly shakes her head, then looks at her friend with a sad smile.

"So… you invented space travel just for me, huh?" the Vampire Queen jokes. The two women gaze into each other's eyes, blushing slightly, but the tender moment is interrupted as something rocks the entire capsule, a crack spreading up the pink exterior, although the metallic frame remains unbroken.

The capsule begins rumbling as both women nervously sit on the ground, too afraid to stand up, and the cracks continue to spread. "We've entered an orbital debris field," Bonnibel cries out. "There's too much space junk!" Flames begin forming around the semi-orbular vehicle as it enters the atmosphere. "I-I don't know if we'll make it though! I couldn't prepare for this!" She turns to her friend. "I'm sorry, Marceline. I wasn't thorough enough. I-I left too much to chance!" Tears begin falling from her eyes as she panics, thinking they're both about to die. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"

"Hey," Marceline starts, putting her hands on her shoulders to comfort her. Their eyes lock, then they become entwined in a tender embrace. "If we don't make it, I just want you to know that I love you. I always have, even when we weren't talking." She puts her hands on the princess' cheeks. "And I always will."

As the flames turn from orange-red to blue, the two women lean into a deep, passionate kiss. They remain locked until their capsule slams into something large, and the vehicle shatters.

After a moment, they blink their eyes to find themselves surrounded by candy people, all of which seem to be groaning in mild pain and discomfort.

"Oh no you don't, vampire!" a voice yells at them. They turn to see a Suspencer rushing towards them with a stake in-hand, emblazoned with the Vampire Queen's name in large white lettering. "I've got too much cash riding on your having-been!"

"Guards," Bonnibel calls as Marceline watches her would-be attacker in confusion, not afraid in the slightest. Three banana guards rush forward to apprehend the man, dragging him away.

"Unhand me! If you had any idea who I was, you wouldn't dare—" He notices a figure standing off to the side, although neither PB nor Marceline can see them. "Kevin! Tell them, you pathetic half of a nothing!"

Nobody steps forward, and he is dragged off kicking and screaming by the guards. The Vampire Queen cocks an eyebrow as she sees this; the figure is familiar, although she can't remember where from.

The following day, Marceline and Bonnibel are hanging out in the princess' restored outdoor lab after learning what had happened while they were gone; the tuffbone distress signal, the thing that had caused Marceline and Finn to get struck and caused the former to destroy the princess' origin outdoor lab, had spread to clone-Cinnamon Bun and magnetically charged him. He added candy people (among others) to his mass and made a giant version of himself, then became a de-facto dictator. All the while, Suspencer had broken into Marceline's house and stole some of her demo tracks and planned to release them to the public, claiming she was dead in her absence.

The Vampire Queen hangs out the window, chatting with a couple fans and signing autographs. "Thanks Marceline! We're glad you're back!" they exclaim.

"Pff~!" she laughs. "Did you think the infinite darkness of the universe could keep me from my fans?" She scribbles her name on a couple pictures, then slides back in and shuts the window.

As soon as it's sealed, she flops onto a beanbag chair and lifts up her music journal with a groan. "I can't believe ol' what's-his-name wanted to release my raw demos. _Too_ embarrassing."

"Aww, I bet they're great," Bonnibel reassured her. "But I respect the privacy of your work."

"Haha, is that why the whole kingdom thinks you were away at a 2-week-long brunch?"

"...Yes."

Marceline pulls up her new acoustic guitar and puts it on her lap. "That was a pretty neat ship, Bonnie. Too bad those space ferns made off with it."

"They'll never be able to synthesize more fuel. Not with the tuffbone on the move."

"I'll miss those guys. I hope their freedom has the leaflan miffed!"

"Oh, I _guarantee_ they've written some very rude star-words about it." She begins lowering herself to the eyepiece, but she catches Marceline's look of apprehension out of the corner of her eye and stops. "Y'know…" She rolls her chair over to the Vampire Queen as she strums her guitar. "Who cares what they think?"

Both women gaze affectionately into one-another's eyes, blushing slightly. Marceline, not pausing in her playing, asks, "Does this mean we're…?"

Bonnibel's smile grows, and she leans forward to give the woman in front of her a peck on the lips. "Yeah, it does"

"Good." Marceline places the guitar on the ground next to her. "Because it's been way too long since I've been able to do this." She brings her hands forward and clasps them behind the princess' neck, pulling them together. Their lips lock and Bonnibel climbs out of her chair. She sits atop the Vampire Queen's lap, straddling her and increasing the fervor .

After a solid minute, they break, both of them smiling from ear to ear. "I really missed this," Bubblegum sighs. She runs her hands through

Marceline smiles joyously and embraces the princess. She holds her in her arms, running her hands through her pink hair. As she holds her now-girlfriend in her arms, a feeling of guilt pangs her heart. "I'm sorry, Bonnie," she whispers, tears forming in her eyes.

"For what?"

"For… everything. I've been keeping a lot of pain inside, and I was too afraid to talk about it." She sees Bonnibel open her mouth, but cuts her off before she can say anything. "I was scared to talk to _you_ about it, especially. But you're the only person I felt I _could_ take to about it, so it just fed into this vicious cycle." Standing up, she begins pacing around the room, PB anxiously listening. "When we first met, I'd lost everyone close to me; my mom, Simon, Tom and the other humans. But with you, I was finally with somebody that I thought I'd never lose… but I lost you, too, and I was alone again.

"I vilified you in my mind and tried to hate you, but I just couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. When we finally started hanging out again, I was terrified to do anything because I didn't wanna risk losing you a second time."

Bonnibel rises and takes a step towards her. "Marcy…"

"Please, just let me finish. I want to get this off my chest; I've ignored it long enough."

Slowly nodding, the princess allows her to continue.

"Thanks. Anyways, I didn't want our second chance to end like the first, so I tried to stay out of your way, and I tried to ignore my feelings. I thought that just playing it safe and staying friends would mean we wouldn't get as serious as we did last time, and if things went bad, it wouldn't hurt either of us like it did last time. Things didn't go according to plan, though; you were so nice to me, and you were even willing to put off your job just to hang out that I couldn't help but fall for you all over again.

"I hated that I had feelings for you again even after trying so hard not to, but more than that, I was afraid that you wouldn't feel the same way about me. And the more you did for me, the more hope I had, but the more hopeful I was, the more afraid I was, too." Her tears begin rolling down her cheeks. "When Pim turned Ooo all crazy, I did everything I could to help you, and I came so close. I managed to bring the real you back from your crazy elemental thing, and…" she chokes on her words, "...and we kissed, but just when I thought we could have something, you got pulled back in. After everything was back to normal, you couldn't remember any of it."

She pauses and glances at Bonnibel, seeing a look of shock and compassion on her face, then continues her monologue. "This hurt me more than anything, and I could barely look at you without remembering how close we came. When you threw me into space, it was just too much for me, and I freaked out. I poured out all of the frustration I've been building since the beginning, even though you didn't deserve any of it. Not even for sending me to the stars, since you did it to protect your people and had no other real solution. I'm sorry, Peebs. I really am, for all of this."

Just as she finishes, she finally breaks. Her tears get heavier, and sobs replace her words. Bonnibel slowly makes her way over to her and pulls the taller woman into an embrace, stroking her hair to soothe her as Marceline cries into her shoulder. "Hey, come here. You don't have anything to be sorry for," she consoles. "I've never stopped loving you Marcy—not really—and nothing is going to change that. Besides, I was just as afraid to do anything as you were." She puts a finger under her girlfriend's chin and uses her thumb to wipe away the tears from one eye. "No matter what, I won't leave you alone."

Marceline sniffles and smiles. "Thanks," she whispers.

"No problem." Bonnibel leans in for another kiss, but a knock comes at the door. With a sigh, she lets go of her new girlfriend and shouts, "Who is it?"

"Just us," Finn's voice calls through.

Marceline sits back down on the beanbag as Bubblegum lowers into her swivel chair. "Alright, come in."

Finn and Jake walk through the door, and the former says, "It's good to see you all back. Stuff really went crazy while you two were gone."

"So we heard," the princess responds, pretending to organize her notes. "I'm going to need to decide what we're gonna do with Clone-CB and that con who stole Marceline's demos."

Jake leans against the wall and pretends to check his nails. "Well, if you need anything, we're gonna be free for a while. Just got a guy to do our chores, so that's cleared up a lot of our time."

"We'll call if we need anything. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got some… private matters to discuss."

"Oh, alright." Finn opens up the door and begins stepping out, his brother close behind him. "Well, seeya later, I guess."

Marceline waves, then as the door closes, she asks, "I'm guessing you don't plan on telling anyone about us?"

"No, not yet," the princess responds. "You know how people can be; I want some time before we make this public. You know, to make sure people don't go too crazy over it."

"Well… alright. I can see where you're coming from." She floats over to her new girlfriend, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "You do know what this means, right?" Bonnibel shakes her head. With a sultry tone in her voice, she leans in close and whispers, "It means I'm gonna hafta be twice as crazy with you when we're alone."

Bubblegum blushes and smiles. "Well, we've got a lot of missed time to make up, so you can be as crazy as you want." She flashes Marceline a mischievous grin. "And you can bet I'm going to match you."

"You can try," the Vampire Queen jokes as she descends into Bonnibel's lap. They lean into another deep, passionate kiss, their lips locking in an ardent embrace. As she leans more into her girlfriend, clasping her hands behind her head, she feels the princess' hands on her back, pulling them even closer.

"Oh Glob, Marcy," Bonnibel sighs, breathing heavily as they break the kiss. "I never want this to end."

"Well, it doesn't need to."


	10. Surprise!

In the months following their space adventure and accompanying rebirth of their love, Bonnibel and Marceline's lives have only gotten more hectic. They discovered that the princess' bioengineered family (Uncle Gumbald, Aunt Lolly, and Cousin Chicle) were restored to their original forms following Lumpy Space Princess purging Ooo of the elemental energies tainting it, and that they were building a kingdom specifically to rival the Candy Kingdom. Additionally, they were spying on Bonnibel's allies—Marceline in particular. While her dad was visiting and being a mild nuisance at her Hamburger Hills concert, Chicle decided to sabotage the show, inciting a group of ghosts to attack them.

When they told Bubblegum about the incident, she was immediately sympathetic, and even took time out of her packed schedule to personally apologize to her secret girlfriend. They later laughed at some of Hunson's inquiries into his daughter's personal life, particularly those involving the prospect of her love- life.

To make up for this, and also to help get her mind off of the current events, she started looking for somewhere to take Marceline out to. However, their differing interests made this somewhat difficult, until she saw an ad while she was browsing online. The logo immediately caught her eye: a yellow snake weaving between disembodied heads of two candy people mounted on wooden spikes. This ad was for the same band that she and Marceline had went out to watch centuries before, and where she got her prized rock shirt.

As she remembers the shirt and what became of it, she sighs in both nostalgia and regret. The shirt was her single most prized possession ever since she got it, and for a long time, the only thing she had left of the time she and Marceline spent together. Now that they're dating again, it doesn't hurt as much to have lost it, but she still somewhat regrets not finding a way to get Hambo back without giving up the shirt.

Quickly clicking on the ad, she reads the linked article, finding that the band was getting back together for the first time in 300 years—they're part of a longer-lived race that can easily survive for many hundred years, although they aren't biologically immortal like PB and Marceline. It claims to be a one-time reunion set for that year's "OOOOOOOOOO Musicfest." In spite of its seemingly genre-neutral name, it is a celebration of Ooo's biggest punk musicians. The tickets are almost out, but she quickly buys two and texts Marceline.

 _B: Hey, wanna go out Thursday?  
B: I found a thing that I think you'll _really _wanna go to._

A few moments later, she gets her response.

 _M: sure, y not?  
M: wut is it?  
B: That's a secret, silly!  
M: ok. should i just show up yer place then?  
B: Yeah, that sounds good. We'll fly Morrow there.  
M: wen u want me over?  
B: Probably around 8:30-9PM.  
M: i'll b there. hope its good!  
B: I know you'll love it.  
M: as much as i luv u?  
B: You're so cheesy! 3_

A smile on her face, she continues texting Marceline as she tries to plan out what they'll do that night.

Later, on the day of the show, she looks over the scattered items on her bed, Lady Rainicorn there to help her pack. "Hmmm…"

Among the items randomly dispersed along her mattress are her ball-blam-burglerber and electrode gun, various radio-like electronics, two bottles of water, a spare dress, some sunscreen, a bag of granola, her electronically-augmented glasses (which she affectionately calls her "techno-peepers"), and the tickets to the event itself. An array of outfits are scattered on the floor at the foot of the bed.

"Yeaaah, I don't think I can leave _any_ of this stuff behind," she says.

Lady leans over the bed and asks something in Korean.

"It _isn't_ just a concert though!" Bonnibel cries in response, through her hands into the air. "This is important, and I have to be prepared!"

With an amused smile, Lady asks another question.

"I don't know! That's the point of being prepared!" She takes a breath, then suddenly has an idea. "Oh, I know! I'll bring two packs!"

She hears a more-than-familiar laugh from the window. "That might be overdoing it."

"Marceline!" Bonnibel cries out in surprise, whipping around to face the window. As soon as she turns away, Lady begins filling her bag with stuff, intentionally omitting the weapons and gadgets (minus the glasses)

"Who else would be at your window, P-Bubs?"

Lady floats over the bed and waves at Marceline, saying a quick greeting in her native language.

"Hey, Lady." She grins and refocuses back on the princess as she pulls out her phone, scrolling through a long line of messages. "Besides. You only texted me 1,245 times reminding me to be on time!" Marceline puts her phone back into her pocket as her girlfriend blushes, then pulls a pile of sticky notes from the folds of the flannel shirt tied around her waist. "Plus all these sticky notes I found around my house! When did you even _do_ that?"

"Oh, that's not important," Bonnibel responds, pushing the notes aside. "Let's get going!" She rushes past the Vampire Queen to the window and lets out a loud screech, calling her avian mount.

"So," Marceline begins, putting a hand on the princess' shoulder, "you gonna tell me what the big surprise is or…?" Behind them, Lady finishes packing PB's bag.

Bubblegum shakes her head with a cheeky grin on her face, then her rainicorn friend hands over her pack. "Thanks, Lady!" A moment later, Marrow thrusts its large feathered head through the window with a mighty screech. "Morrow!"

Both women mount the bird, flying towards their destination as Lady sends them off. A matter of minutes later, they've crossed half of Ooo and have disembarked the royal avian mount. "Thanks, Morrow!" Bonnible shouts as her bird flies off.

Marceline's jaw drops as she sees the banner directly ahead announcing their location. "No _way_ Bonnie!" she cries, watching all of the people cycle into the Musicfest grounds. She turns to her girlfriend. "I thought you hated punk stuff?"

"N-no! You've taught me a lot about music since—"

"Oh my Glob, that's right! Your first punk show!" the Vampire Queen interrupts with a laugh. "That guy dropped a chili dog on you! And I gave you that shirt to cover the stain!" Bonnibel blushes, then spots a poster at the edge of her vision. "Remember that band— hm?"

She sees Bonnibel smile and gesture over her shoulder. Following her gummy girlfriend's finger, she sees the logo of the very band she was speaking of. "No way!" she shouts.

"They're having a reunion tour!" Bonnibel giggles. "Surprise!"

Marceline blushes and turns to her girlfriend, almost going in for a kiss in spite of the hundreds of people around. "Bonnie…"

Bubblegum checks her watch and sees that they've arrived late. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" she cries, grabbing the smiling vampire-demon's hand and leading her through the gates. "We've got a schedule to keep!" She pumps her fist. "And precious memories to form!"

Over the next several hours, they simply enjoy the convention—eating junk food (or, in Marceline's case, draining the red out of them), watching the performances before the main event, and generally having a good time. As the one of the middling bands plays through their opening song, Marceline grins as she sees the fun Bonnibel is having, even head-banging along with the music. She taps her on the shoulder, then wraps an arm around her waist and lifts her into the air, getting a perfect view for the show.

The princess laughs as she is raised from the ground, hugging herself to her girlfriend.

As the show goes on break before the main event, Bonnibel and Marceline walk through the show's grounds, hand-in-hand. The princess notices a merch stand as they wander around, and she redirects their path to it. "Hey! Is this where you're selling the band's shirts?" she asks, pointing to the poster on the back wall.

"Weeeell, about that…" the man tending the stand starts. "We got nuttin'. Our entire merch wagon _vanished_ on the way here!"

A shadow falls over Bonnibel's face. "What."

"Yuppers, no trace of it! A reeeal myst—"

"I need the toilet!" the princess suddenly interjects, quickly turning around and making the Vampire Queen jump. She blushes and clears her throat. "Ahem, I mean… BRB!" She begins marching off into the crowd. "From the bathroom!"

Marceline watches her girlfriend disappear into the crowd, confused at the sudden outburst. "Okaaay?"

As soon as she's put sufficient space between herself and Marceline, Bubblegum calls Morrow and mounts her bird, quickly finding some tracks a few miles from the Musicfest grounds. "Of all the things to go missing!" she cries out, before slinging off her pack and digging through its contents. "No. I can solve this! Nothing vanishes without a trace! I just need my…"

She fails to find any of her weapons and gadgets, pulling out only a water battle and spare dress. "Oh, _what_?!" The princess dumps the items onto Morrow's back. "Lady! You left out all the good stuff!" She crams them back into her bag, then steels her jaw. "Look's like I'm doing this…" Bonnibel pumps her fist, "...old school! With my peepers…" She laughs and lowers her glasses from the top of her head, clicking a tiny button on the side. "My techno-peepers! (perfect for viewing afar off stage!")

The princess scans over the ground, her glasses analyzing the surroundings. They lock onto a feather on the ground, identifying that they come from no known bird. "I wonder…" She looks to the trees, her glasses now finding a set of broken branches, clearly bent outwards by several large creatures bursting through the foliage. "Yup-yup! So _that_ can only mean…"

Bubblegum looks to the mountains to see several avian forms flying over a massive crevice, visible even from her position. Their flight patterns, like the feathers, match no known birds in Ooo. "Bingo-bango," she says under her breath, borrowing Dirt Beer Guy's catchphrase. Morrow brings her up at immense speed, but in the few seconds it takes to reach the crevice, the bird-like things have lowered into it.

She looks down and sees a gathering of humanoids with distinct avian characteristics: "Harpies!" She dismounts her bird and crouches at the edge of the crevice. "And—" she gasps as she sees them wearing the band's merch and throwing away the music itself. "They're not even _listening_ to the CDs! Those posers" Clenching a fist, she feels her anger grow inside herself, then she leaps down the slope. "I'm gonna salt your slugs!" she shouts.

As she hits the bottom of the slope, bending her knees to absorb the impact, the nearest harpy rears up. "What the beans, lady!" they cry. "This is _our_ turf!" Ignoring her, Bonnibel pulls her spare dress from her bag and leaps past the avian humanoid, wrapping its head in the fabric. "Woah! Woah! Woah!"

Bubblegum hits the ground behind them and uses the momentum to swing the harpy into the air, then slam them into the hard stony earth.

"Jeez Peebs, how long is that bathroom line?" Marceline asks, noticing her girlfriend's been absent for nearly half an hour. "Shoulda just gone in the woods." She crosses her arms as watches the show, yet another band playing—this one a pre-Mushroom War classic rock tribute band—but finds it hard to enjoy the performance as she begins getting nervous. Eventually, after a few more songs, she turns invisible and flies into the air. She notices Morrow flying from the mountains, her vampiric sight allowing her to see the distance without difficulty, and decides to investigate.

Meanwhile, still fighting the harpies, Bonnibel pulls out a bag of granola and throws a handful into the air, te avian humanoids immediately getting distracted by it. She takes this opportunity to slide between them, scooping up a box of shirts in the process. The princess sprints away, a grin on her face as the harpies stare after her in shock.

"Alright," one of them shrieks. "I'm startin' to feel silly, ladies."

"Real silly," another agrees.

A third sneers at the princess. "Yeah!"

They fly up into the air and begin pounding their wings, powerful gusts slamming into Bonnibel and taking her off her feet. She sees herself tumble over the edge, but suddenly slams into something, stopping her momentum. "Oof!"

"This ain't the bathroom," Marceline jokes, becoming visible with the princess in her arms.

"Marcy!" She notices the box falling far below them. "Aw, donk."

The Vampire Queen brings the princess back to the ledge, the harpies beginning to shout at her. "Hey! Hey! You keep that ding-dong back!"

"She's runnin' around throwin' stuff!"

"Let's get 'er!"

Smirking at her girlfriend, Marceline's body grows and distorts, adopting a giant, mildly demonic form. She loudly hisses, quickly sending the harpies fleeing in a panic.

As soon as the coast is clear, she returns to normal and floats above the princess' shoulder with a patronizing smile. "What have you been _doing_ Bonnibel?"

Bubblegum looks away and awkwardly holds her bicep, blushing. "Trying to get the band's merchandise back…"

"Why?"

She remains silent for a few moments, then whirls around with tears forming in her eyes. "I don't have the shirt you gave me anymore!" she cries. "I wanted to replace it!" She sighs, wiping at one eye. "But not just the shirt… I wanted to go to another really fun concert with you." The princess looks at Marceline. "I wanted _new_ memories to go along with this shirt, too."

Blushing, Marceline puts on hand on her shoulder and smiles. "That is _so_ sweet…" Seeing the princess blush even deeper, she doubles over in laughter. "Hah! And so dumb!" As she laughs, she notices her girlfriend cross her arms and purse her lips.

"Hey," she grunts.

Marceline refocuses herself and smiles, her blush slowly growing. "No, but really… We've been through _so much_ since then. We're such different people now! Why try to recreate the past?" She leans forwards, staring into Bonnibel's deep green eyes. "Think of everything we have to look forward to…"

As they start to bring their lips together, they hear loud sniffling behind them, making both women jump. They look over to see the harpies regrouped, watching them with moist eyes.

"So beautiful!" one cries. The rest say nothing, simply watching the women's exchange, some even on the brink of tears.

"You want to give me one of those shirts then?" Marcline asks.

All of the harpies immediately become stone-faced. "No."

"Hey! It was worth a shot," the Vampire Queen shrugs as the princess grunts in annoyance beside her. She unties the flannel shirt from around her waist, then wraps it around her girlfriend's shoulders. "Can we get back to the concert now? Please?"

Bonnibel smiles and gently grabs the unbuttoned front placket. "Alright. Let's go."

Her girlfriend scoops her up in her arms and begins flying back to the concert, planting repeated heavy smooches on her all the way.


End file.
